Liberation
by Kathrinator
Summary: When a human gives up on humanity, where do they belong? A morality tale that follows a perspicacious individual who confides in a mysterious Agency and discovers her role in the spiralling world of the unknown. Spans from pre-first-movie to the end of 'Revolutions'. OC focused, but cameos canon characters and remains as canon as possible! Drama/Crime/Sci-fi/Thriller. Novel quality
1. Chapter 1

**AUTHOR'S NOTES: _I know the first chapter will be tedious to read for those who are not philosophically inclined, but please do not be discouraged as the following chapters are balanced out with character development with action scenes._**

**Fun Fact:** The philosophy article that starts the chapter is actually a short screenplay I wrote to a post-apocalyptic short film I made.

* * *

You don't know me, you've never seen or heard of me in your life. It's just some other person dwelling in the world leeching resources and returning nothing or contributing next to nothing back into society. Why should I listen to what they have to say? I don't know them personally, and if they aren't recognized on television, than who gives a damn about their opinion? My name, just a meaningless title. Male, female, does it really make a definite difference? My sexuality, alludes my very entity. Asexuality. While something as such should be praised due to dual understanding of the needs of the many, it is an extraction from society. Well I tell you, fellow homosapien, I may not be a celebrity, a renowned psychiatrist, hell, I don't even get paid more than minimum wage, but I know the value of life.

Isn't it funny how from the earliest moments we can remember, correction and discipline have molded us into the beings we call ourselves today. We tell ourselves, there is no room for failure and no time for repetitive trial. We don't know why, but we frown upon any form of setbacks and anyone bestowed by them. They don't have a job, they live with their parents, they have no vehicle, they have no education, why should I spare them my time, concern, and appreciation? If time is of the essence and in irreversible motion, it is apparent that gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, wrath, and envy is the equation of selfishness that defines humanity. Compare humans to any other species, and it is clear that the magnitude of ruthlessness and savagery is second to none and so brands mankind.

So the question often arises: What is the meaning of life? Simply put, no one will ever know and we can only speculate such an answer. However, the value of life is similar but a whole new question in itself. Look outside your window and see what the world has become. A single species has evolved and overpopulated the earth, expanding its habitat every passing minute with air clogging technological advancements of every kind to better itself and, in turn, to ignore the planet's needs. Look back inside, you see your shelter cluttered with endless forms of this same technology, and resources that are fit to feed a heart attack. We equip ourselves with remedies and weaponry to fend off the internal and external forms of terrorism that we try so desperately to dismiss. We hang onto the hopes of bettering ourselves with this hoard of so-called necessities and believe that this is what makes us a valuable catch to potential companions and mates. What we fail to recognize is that materialism doesn't compile the full equation of a human being, but it does play a considerable role.

What starts as a concept and idea, turns into a simple invention and/or experiment that is either improved upon, or scrapped entirely. Depending on the nature of the project, it is kept in isolation, quarantine if you will, from the public until it's inevitable release. Often this final product is recalled due to potential hazards or side effects. But I have realized that the government's experiment was no accident but perhaps the answer to the equation of a human being.

We blindly carry about these traditional and routinely lives without question and return to the perfect little worlds we call home. The media luring our attention with blinders, our minds focused upon our golden goals, our bodies set in slumber, meanwhile a biding conspiracy strengthens in numbers. A revolution ready to be unleashed.

We suspend our skills and dreams, eagerly awaiting that fateful snag when someone will snap up our proposals when we realize that patience is a virtue that we fail to recognize. Is it luck when fate extends its hand to us, or through the agitating task of kindness we ultimately get smitten?

Bitten is the hand that feeds; and now the question is if it's a flesh wound or something internal? Is it something that can be fixed with a cleansing, or something I have to cauterize and deal with the consequences of scarring? Or maybe even amputate to start fresh?

Time upon time again we throw ourselves into a pool of fire ants, seeing how long we can endure the constant nips and jabs until we either have become immune to feeling and sensory, or we flail our arms and bail out. We succumb to temptation and arouse ourselves in panic until we realize our inevitable doom. Doom we have escaped until it slaps us in the face, slithers through our bloodstream, and devours our braincells. Upon this epiphany, devastation becomes a way of life as we realize everyone is lost or about to be consumed by this immortal, airbourne fatality.

Like any predator, we prey upon the weak and abuse this power relentlessly. And yet, we are weak, cowardly, and even unsure of ourselves. Relying on the predetermined path that all humans take: The road to success. We are born, we educate ourselves, we find our careers, we find our lovers and companions, we reproduce, and we die, leaving behind a legacy that touches few and is soon forgotten.

This interaction is the key to survival. Like any other life form driven by sexual activity, humans act through their root instincts. The need for males to woo and mate with their female counterparts is a way of life, and vice versa. Isn't it ironic how those who shy away from relationships and focus upon their career tend to be the most successful by defying the rules implanted into our brains from infancy? And those who try to later bring a relationship into their successful formula sooner or later find disaster?

Skin, hair, eyes, teeth, height, weight, body type, voice, age; all characteristics defining our personas and overlooking the untamed beast within. Behind these fleshy masks and moissanite eyes, lies the nature of mankind; the true meaning and value of the human life. We plot, we covet, we fantasize; all the schematics lurk beneath our skin. As humans, we knowingly possess the power to endeavor these thoughts, feelings, and emotions into physical and audible actions. No bestiary doctrine, no almighty power or voice is telling us to apply for that job or rape that woman senseless. We are in tune to our minds and bodies; no overriding force makes us commit these actions. The inaudible excuse so many accuse of forcing them to steal and murder, and to buy that overpriced make of vehicle, or to pass notes in class because that undeniable love interest is much more logical than that basic math you need to graduate. We are caught in this web of tactical misfortune that shrouds our entire lives in an overriding darkness, uplifting the value of life and replacing it with a formula for chaos. Sincerely yours, Lady Aristotle.

Mary lifted her glazed blue eyes from her glaring computer screen to the nearby window. Rain clinked against the glass, breaking her devoted concentration on her newest philosophy article. With an irritated groan, she threw her head backwards against her armchair. Her long blond hair whipped against the leather, creating another clatter to further disturb her concentration. Her eyes trailed around the dimly lit living room and stopped at the face of an antique mantle clock, making her realize that she had been on her computer for longer than she anticipated.

"Eight o'clock," she muttered to herself, extending an arm to sip her cup of tea. Her youthful face quickly furrowed in disgust as she spat out the word, "Cold."

Beyond agitated now, she lifted her rooted bottom off of the warm leather to flick on the few old fashioned lamps in the room. Once on, a slim smile crossed her face briefly as the room glowed and invited her to stay a few hours more. Already being in her pajama pants and bare feet made it all the more alluring as it felt like she was bracing herself for a slumber party. With the room now alit, it revealed the aged interior that had been there since she was a child. Being the largest room in the one hundred year old house, Mary had managed to move nearly all of her daily essentials into it. Despite consisting of an office furniture set, a daybed, a mini fridge, and the unmoved lounge furnishings, the room remained uncluttered and organized.

She shut the curtains to each window and returned to her office chair. With the curtains drawn, she unzipped and removed her hooded sweatshirt, unveiling her curvy bust that complemented the tank top she wore. Her focus was then redirected to her article and she read the words aloud, "But I have realized that the government's experiment was no accident but perhaps the answer to the equation of a human being."

She pondered on the statement for a moment, her fingers twitching with eagerness to punch keys on her worn keyboard. She sighed and slammed her index finger on the delete key, erasing the entire sentence from existence. She saved and closed the document, returning to the desktop screen of an infinite white hallway. She examined it for a moment, as if trying to figure out the answer to an equation, then opened the Internet icon. She double-checked each window to make sure she had closed the curtains, then brought up a few bookmarked pages that seemed to flawlessly piece together. Each page contained restricted articles about codes that reminded her of binary, the government, and a wanted terrorist known as "Morpheus". Her eyes glazed over again as she skimmed each article multiple times, as if trying to decipher a hidden message. Suddenly, her body jolted in a flinch when her screen cut to black. Moments later, it blinked with a single green cursor.

"Hello Mary Simms…" the screen slowly typed, her hands far from the keyboard and clenching the arms of her chair. "We know what you have been up to, 'Lady Aristotle'. There was no governmental 'accident'. We have the answer to your equation."

Mary's body instantly froze into a cold sweat. Her mouth grew watery as her stomach turned over, and her eyes couldn't budge an inch from the screen.

"The Matrix has you… You have known all this time. Come join us for tea, Alice. Follow the white rabbit…" before the screen could continue typing, she leapt from her chair and yanked the power plug from the computer tower. She sighed in a panicked relief when the monitor remained in an empty darkness. But before she could reclaim her sanity, there came a rapping at the front door.

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**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is my first fanfiction story that I have ever written... _Constructive reviews_ would be highly appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **This chapter introduces the Agents and focuses primarily upon developing Mary's character.

**Fun Fact:** The name "Mary Simms" came from mixing a name of a deceased relative and the surname of another branch of my family tree. "Mary" was simply chosen because she recently passed on, and (since the Matrix has a lot of religious context in it) because the 'Virgin Mary' story has always fascinated me to a degree. "Simms" was chosen because of it's multiple meanings: 1. The analysis found here: [link] matched her character, 2. It reminded me of "The Sims" strategic life-simulation game, and 3. SIMM: A printed circuit board that holds several semiconductor memory chips and is used to add memory to a computer. Acronym for single in-line memory module.

* * *

Mary's heart pounded violently against her chest to the point where she was worried that her ribs would shatter. She stood at her silenced computer with her gaze directed towards the hallway that led to the front door, thinking that maybe the knocking was actually her heart. But another set of rapping quickly reminded her that this was no dream. With a heaving sigh, she attempted to gather herself and proceed towards the front door. With each step she grew more confident and her body became a blank canvas completely ridden of emotion. She turned on the hallway light and then finally the exterior porch light, which silhouetted three bulky figures that stood behind the draped door window.

She extended an arm to the doorknob and unlocked the multiple locks with her free hand. She paused, staring at her hovering hand that had yet to grasp the brass doorknob. She shook her head slightly and forced her hand upon it, carefully squeezing the cold metal as her wrist twisted. The latch clicked and soon the door was open to give faces to the shadowy figures. All three of them were Caucasian males sporting dark hair that was slicked back, identical dark green suits, dark green ties, silver tie clips, white dress shirts and shined dress shoes. She immediately tried to begin categorizing each of them like she often did when encountering new people, but it proved impossible with their eyes hidden behind their dark, squared, and frameless sunglasses. She noticed they all wore communication earpieces that automatically made her assume they were of governmental stature. Each bore a similar blandness of expression on their face and seemed to be completely oblivious to the rain. One of the men held onto a heaping folder that she could only assume carried confidential documents. Her gaze drifted passed their shoulders to their vehicle, a black 1965 Lincoln Continental. She bit her tongue, cursing herself for being distracted by the bizarre computer to be unable to hear three car doors bang outside on her doorstep.

She remained quiet while they took a moment to observe each other; feeling rather awkward being dressed the way she was compared to their formal attire. However she didn't let it phase her unbroken stone face, but she was secretly glad she didn't remove her bra yet tonight.

"Miss Simms, I presume?" said the first male, who she quickly understood to be the trio's leader with his booming yet carefully modulated voice.

She swiftly responded with a silent nod, never breaking eye contact with the man who had pierced the silence. Despite her courageousness, she had yet to find her voice against these men who towered at least a foot over her.

"Miss Simms, we're here on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We have some quest-" he was punctually cut off by Mary.

"Do you have some identification to justify that claim?" Mary casually asked from her doorway, her tone almost mimicking the Agent's. She noted his irritation at being silenced midsentence, and replied, "Did you actually expect I would believe you just 'cause you're in some fancy suits?"

The leader nodded at his colleagues, and each male presented her with a FBI identification card. She validated each one with a nod, eying the minuscule details that she knew made their credentials legit.

"Well, Agent Pierce, Agent Bryce, and Agent Smith," she began, her tone shifting to her own, which was dry with a hint of sophisticated charm. "Welcome to my abode. Come in out of the rain before you catch pneumonia."

She backed up into the hallway, and beckoned them to enter. The Agents eyes darted to each other behind their concealed lenses, unsure of how to comprehend the sudden change in her attitude and overall presentation. Agent Pierce, the leader of the trio, was the first to enter the old house, closely followed by Bryce, and Smith whom closed the door behind them.

"Can I offer you each a towel? You're dripping all over my hardwood." She inquired, her voice still calm as she strolled away from them into the kitchen at the end of the hallway.

Before any of them could respond, she tossed each of them a tea towel. She examined carefully from the kitchen doorway as they removed their sunglasses to wipe off the extensive droplets, noting they all had icy blue eyes. With their eyes unguarded, she could proceed with breaking down their barriers.

"You can keep those off, if you wish. You bump into my valuables, you buy 'em. But I'm sure your fat government paychecks can afford a sliver of a deduction." She harped in again, clearly unfazed by their authority as she retrieved the towels. "Can I get you some tea?"

"We're fine." Agent Pierce grumbled. "Miss Simms, I am going to be as frank with you as I can. I can assure you that the seriousness behind our visit tonight cannot be found in a tea cup." He paused, watching her neatly fold their towels to place on the kitchen table, openly uninterested in the conversation. "We know what you have been up to, 'Lady Aristotle'."

Now they had Mary's undivided attention. She took careful steps towards the agents; her eyes connected to Pierce's, until she glided passed them into the living room. She coolly pulled over the leather armchair from her computer desk, and gestured them to sit on the antique sofas that faced her. They mutely obliged, knowing she was focused now.

"First of all, I am not answering any of your questions, Agent Pierce, until I know exactly how much you've been spying on me." She nodded her head towards the file folder Agent Smith sat on his lap. "And if we're being forthcoming, might I add, I don't appreciate having government goons intruding my home at such a late hour."

Her eyes were fixed solely upon Pierce's; they were as large as saucers as she attempted to stare through his vacant façade. In the dead stillness that was only broken by the occasional clinking of the rain against the large living room windows, Smith unlatched the file folder to bare the overflowing interior. He began skimming through the first few pages, ignoring that she was about to speak up again.

"Mary D. Simms. Five foot six, blue eyes, blond hair, age twenty-one. Father deceased, mother died three years ago. The estate was left to you, as well as a large sum of money. You graduated high school with honors, you were an outstanding dramatic arts student, and now you work from the home as a life columnist for a nationally distributed newspaper." Smith flipped through several more pages, the paper rattling marking the pregnant silence. Each page that was turned over was like a prick into her brain, but she continued to hold strong with a face that looked unusually relaxed to say it was frowning. "It's quite clear, Miss Simms, that you are a highly intelligent individual whom specializes in behavioral sciences. Which is why we believe you can help us settle some unresolved matters we share."

With her concentration shifted to Smith, she callously replied, "I believe, Agent Smith, what you meant to say was 'give us reason to arrest you'. What else is in that dossier? A complete psychological profile?"

Then Agent Bryce piped in, "You have a brilliant young mind Miss Simms, and your philosophical articles prove that. You are very accomplished for someone of your age. You should be proud."

Mary was relieved to know that all three actually had voices. This would make her mind games all the more enjoyable.

"So you think I'm plagiarizing? That I'm some sort of fraud? Does a true artist trace? No. The 'copy and paste' function is, in my humble opinion, a demeaning utility. The very idea that I would steal is ridiculous." Her eyebrows furrowed, disturbed by their hinted accusation. "The common theme of my articles is the power of choice. The message that I'm trying to convey to people is that we cannot see beyond our choices, that they control us, and that ultimately, choice is an illusion."

Agent Pierce opened his mouth, but Smith stole his thunder.

"Is that the reason why you choose to live in solitude? Why you turned down that university scholarship? Why you've made minimal human confrontation since your Mother's passing? Because you believe that if you can prove this thesis of choice, that you'll have peace of mind? I believe Miss Simms, this alias of yours, is your way of broadcasting to the world that you want out. Out of this illusion you call life." Smith smiled as he watched her eyes flare, knowing he had her defeated at her own game. "Our question is simple: Has anyone deciphered your message yet?"

Pierce resumed control of the interrogation, sending a cold glare to Smith. Then he beamed, "I must apologize, Miss Simms, for my colleague's absurdity. He is a rookie, after all."

Smith returned the glare, his teeth clenched behind his closed lips. Mary noticed his hands had become tight knots, and she began to pity him.

"It's quite alright, Agent Pierce. After all," she met Smith with warm eyes and a small smirk, "good things come to those who wait."

Further puncturing a nerve within Smith, she redirected her attention back to Pierce, her gaze returning cold as she only allowed her emotions to seep through briefly.

"We're only here to help you, Miss Simms. We just ask for your full cooperation in our investigation." By now, Pierce's voice had assumed its usual monotone. "We've been led to believe that through some allusions you make in your writings, that you could be potentially putting yourself in danger."

Mary had caught Smith looking at the unplugged computer tower and decided to drop her mind games. She had pushed her luck far enough already and she figured that she could continue to try and outwit their professionally trained minds at a more appropriate time.

"That wasn't you guys earlier?" she could feel their bodies tense up as she gave them a non-diluted response, "I thought you hacked into my computer."

Agent Bryce immediately arose to his feet, briskly crossed the room, and seized control of the computer. Mary's jaw opened slightly at his response time, not expecting someone of such colossal size to move that fast.

"What happened earlier for you to make that assumption?" Pierce asked, keeping a watchful eye on Smith who had since begun inspecting the closest telephone.

Not wanting to answer a question with another question at this point, she simply replied, "The screen went black and started to communicate with me through metaphorical language. Saying 'they knew what I had been up to', and 'to follow the white rabbit'. And…" She paused; knowing that what she was about to say next was probably a bad decision. "And 'that the Matrix has me'."

At "Matrix", all three Agents turned their attention directly to the confused young woman. It was at this point when Mary truly felt uncomfortable for the first time since they had arrived. She had acknowledged from the beginning that she wasn't supposed to know about the Matrix, but her curiosity betrayed her.

"I-I know about M-Morpheus as well, and the terrorist organization that he leads… I just wanted to get an answer." She continued, growing nervous, as none of them had blinked since she mentioned the "M" word.

"What answer is that, Miss Simms?" Pierce asked, leaning closer towards her.

"The answer to my question, 'Is choice an illusion'." Mary sunk into her leather chair, knowing there was no turning back now. "If it's any consolation though, I think he's just another crazy pastor. Probably looking to suck people dry of money by toying with their beliefs, like all good religious leaders."

The Agents, though still tense, appeared a little relieved at her speculation.

"You are partially correct, Miss Simms. He is a very dangerous individual who uses innocent people as his personal army once he successfully converts them over to his own faith. If you value your life, it would be wise to sever all forms of communication with him and his followers from this point forward." Pierce pointed to his colleagues who had assumed their duties by now, "We will have to monitor your phone line and Internet incase they choose to contact you again."

Mary noticed Bryce inserting a floppy disk into her computer tower and typing furiously as the power cord had been restored, prompting her to her feet.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing to my computer?" she ordered, her tone reeking of annoyance.

Bryce glanced to Pierce, who replied, "Unfortunately we have to confiscate all of your documents as they may be bugged. We apologize for the inconvenience Miss Simms, but it is for your own protection."

Smith had finished tapping the phone and proceeded to head upstairs.

"Where's he going?" Mary demanded to know this instant. It was one thing to have uninvited guests over, but it was beyond her tolerance to have strangers wandering around the depths of her house. Her shoulders twitched and her teeth were now grinding, "Just because I allowed you into my home it doesn't mean I granted you a warrant to do whatever the hell you please to it!"

Pierce shifted uneasily from the sofa, hating to repeat himself. "Again, for your protection Miss Simms. Judging by your living room, you only occupy the lower floor of this two-storey house. The terrorists could be right above you."

"I don't believe this!" she barked, standing as close to the Agent's face as she possibly could. "That isn't possible!"

Before Pierce could reply, the young woman had already found her way upstairs in search for the missing Agent Smith. The upper floor of the house only consisted of a few closets, a bathroom, a master bedroom, and a small bedroom that used to be her room. It was quite apparent that this floor had not been used in a few years as cobwebs had formed in the ceiling corners and a thick layer of dust carpeted the otherwise hardwood floor. Every door had been opened on the floor, making it harder for her to determine where the Agent remained. She poked her head into all of the rooms to find every box, closet, and drawer had been opened and rummaged through.

She hastily found Smith in her Mother's old room, who was peering into cardboard boxes that he had drug out from under the bed. She slowly walked up behind him and folded her arms into her chest.

"Those boxes haven't been touched since she passed on, Agent. None of this entire floor has!" Mary exclaimed with her face twisted into a permanent frown.

Agent Smith turned to stand directly in front her and held out a Nokia S110 cell phone that had an extended antenna.

"I beg to differ, Miss Simms." His grip tightened around the phone to the point where she could have sworn she heard it crack. "If you haven't touched this floor in a few years, then please explain to me why I hold a brand new cell phone?"

"I-I-I d-don't know. I've n-never even seen a phone like that in my life." Her eyes bulged from her head and embarrassment paled her face. "Ho-how would they-?"

"Very easily, they move like ghosts. I'll need to confiscate this," he noted, opening his jacket to safely put away the phone. His jacket was open far enough that his Desert Eagle holster was visible. This threw Mary into a completely frozen entrancement, which he was quick to jump upon, "It's alright, Miss Simms. We're not here to hurt you, I can assure you of that. But it's clear now that you are a prime target for the terrorists."

"W-which means what?" Mary asked, snapping out of her daze as he closed his jacket.

"We will have to keep a closer eye on you to ensure your protection. We may even have to move you to a new locatio-" Mary grabbed his arms. "Miss Simms, please try to understand-"

"No you understand! This house is all I have left! Without it… I'm just a drifter…" Her eyes gleamed although she refused to cry. She sighed and released his arms, "Sorry."

He merely nodded, "It's alright." And beckoned her to leave the room.

She slowly headed towards the doorway, when she suddenly whipped her body back to face him with a brightened facade taking him off guard.

"By the way, I didn't want to admit it in front of your supervisor but," she lowered her voice to be muffled by the rain hitting the rooftop, and leaned closer towards his chest as even on her tiptoes she barely reached his chin. "You're right about me abandoning social interaction. I do want peace of mind, Agent Smith. Because right now I feel like I'm oblivious," despite whispering, her voice was stern now, "and somehow being dragged into my own grave. I want to be freed of this loneliness that haunts me every night, this emptiness that envelops everyone's eyes… Including my own. I want purpose."

Trying to comprehend the information just revealed to him, he eventually asked, "Why are you telling me this, Miss Si-?"

"You and I share a common goal, Smith: Advancement. You can't deny it. That demotion earlier... It really burned you, didn't it?" she grinned, her soothing voice having him pinned exactly where she wanted him. "Pierce is a pompous prick, Bryce is an ass kisser, and you are the hopeful novice. You've made it all the way to the FBI, but now you face the true nature of the world." She detected his dwindling comfort level, and pointed to his earpiece, "Control."

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**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is my first fanfiction story that I have ever written... _Constructive reviews_ would be highly appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **This chapter is considerably longer than the previous two chapters (20 pages to be exact). It focuses on developing Mary's sense of 'being' in the world, as well as formerly introducing the 'Terrorists'. I also wanted to explore how we as humans become so reliant on routine and thus are hopelessly devoted to this 'system' of life.

**Fun Facts:**  
1. Mary's middle name "Dianne", is my middle name. It also means "Divine".  
2. ROM, besides standing for "Read-Only Memory" in the computer world, it is actually an abbreviated form of the "Royal Ontario Museum" that I am fond of visiting. It is located in downtown Toronto, which is the cityscape I had in mind when writing this chapter as it is apparently very similar to downtown Chicago (where the Wachowskis are from).  
3. Every neighbourhood that I have included is based upon _The Matrix Online_'s metropolis.

* * *

Mary slowly opened her eyes to have them focus upon the clock resting on an end table. It was quarter after eight, and the bright morning sun was burning viciously through the gap in the curtains onto her face. An aggravated groan escaped her mouth as she forced herself to sit up in the daybed. The living room surrounding her was layered in video game boxes and cartridges for her Nintendo Entertainment System gaming console and her Commodore 64 gaming computer. The bright blue screen of the Commodore 64 glared at her from a card table that she had set it up on. Behind it, the television was frozen on the game completion screen for Super Mario Bros. With an exaggerated stretch of her arms, she pushed herself free of the soft comforter and arose to her feet. Through slightly staggered steps, she gathered up the explosion of controllers and games and turned off both gaming devices. She found an abandoned NES Zapper gun and cocked her head at it briefly before placing it with the other controllers.

It wasn't long until she found herself in front of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Despite her mind rejecting her to do so, she thrust the doors of the fridge and freezer open. The interiors were incredibly dismal, only bearing a small container of spaghetti leftovers from the previous night, a freezer burnt package of vegetables, and a frozen turkey. The kitchen cabinets didn't prove to be much better as they only contained cleaning supplies, baking essentials, and various tea products.

With a sigh that reeked of disapproval, she returned to the living room to stand in a dumbfounded fashion by the fireplace. She raised her gaze up to the mantle, a car license plate that read "LU 1224" that had been nailed to the wall as a fireplace ornament stared back at her. She pondered on it for a few moments, but broke free to take a glance at the clock again. It was almost eight thirty. Although hesitance stiffened her posture, she calmly walked over to the curtained front window. She poked an eye out of the sliver of an opening to view the outside world.

It was a quiet street lined with aged Victorian styled brick houses built in a similar fashion to hers. Each property was roughly the same fair size, with open front yards and fenced in back yards. Most of the neighborhood of Union Hill consisted of retired old couples, but contained the odd middle-aged family that didn't mind a second-rate home. The majority of these families couldn't afford the rising rates of the border-lining neighborhoods of Hampton Green nor Baldwin Heights, and had to settle here instead. The only time a vehicle was ever parked on the street was if relatives were visiting one of her aging neighbors - which she only expected was to ensure that their names were on their elderly parents' wills. But ever since the FBI paid her a visit that rainy night a few weeks ago, the same black, 1965 Lincoln Continental had passed her house every thirty minutes from dusk until dawn, seven days a week.

Mary voicelessly counted down the seconds to eight thirty, her concentration devoted on the deserted road that stood about six yards from her current position. Directly on the dot, the black vehicle serenely glided across her view and back into nothingness. The only sound it made besides the quiet hum of its engine was the crunching of autumn colored leaves beneath its tires. But her brows furrowed as something was missing. Or rather, someone was missing. The two front seats were occupied as usual, but the back seat was empty. However, she couldn't tell which Agent was missing as the slightly tinted windows concealed their identities. She wanted to assume it was Smith since Pierce and Bryce were two peas in a pod, but she could only speculate such an answer. She pulled herself from the window and resumed her morning routine.

She exchanged her pajamas with a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt and proceeded into the basement. Like the rest of the house, the basement was decently sized and split off into two main sections. The first section was unfinished and contained the house essentials such as the furnace and boiler that fuelled the radiators, a water softener, a water heater, a washer and dryer, and a fuse box. It also housed the seasonal equipment and decorations, in addition to some hunting and paintball gear that hadn't budged in years. Mary entered the second section of the basement that was guarded by a heavy acoustic door. The door slammed behind her, leaving her standing in a pitch-black room crawling with eerie silence. She quickly found the light switch to turn on the bright fluorescent lights that lined the ceiling. It was an extensive room that expanded from end-to-end of the house horizontally, making it consume the majority of the basement. Unlike the rest of the concrete lower level, hardwood covered the floor and soundproofing acoustic foam panels were spread over the walls and ceiling. A small window was hidden behind a carefully pinned blackout drape, allowing that the only presence of the outer world in this room was a framed oil painting of the "Land of Oz" complete with a rainbow. Not far from the picture was a dartboard that was bolted directly into the wall with six identical darts grouped together at the bullseye. A hanging boxing bag, dumbbells, and other weight lifting equipment sat off in one corner, while an upright piano sat in the opposite one.

Mary walked over to the piano and turned on a ghetto blaster that sat atop the wooden body. Cranking up the volume to the point where she wouldn't be able to hear herself thinking, she was greeted with the slow guitar opening of "Battery" by Metallica. After a dozen stretches that targeted every main muscle group, she proceeded on with her workout routine. In five-minute intervals, she switched between bare-knuckle boxing, curl lifting with dumbbells, kickboxing, bench presses, abdominal crunches, chin-ups, and other various exercises that focused primarily on the upper body. She repeated this process through and after manually switching over to the B-side of the "Master of Puppets" cassette tape.

Once the tape clicked to signify that it had finished, Mary also stopped her workout. Sweat trailed down her reddened face and she spat it out as it hit her lips, despising the salty taste it offered. In the dead silence, she cooled down by playing a few solo rounds of darts. Each projectile hit the bullseye target with inhuman precision, and she too offered a callous façade as a response to her easy victory. She grew bored of the game and turned her attention towards the oil painting. Mary cocked her head at it, as she had earlier at the "Duck Hunt" gun, and her eyes gleamed with an idea.

Leaving the room alit; she exited and swiftly made her way into the laundry and furnace room. She smirked at the hunting and paintball gear that was nestled neatly in a glass cabinet, thinking of how Agent Pierce had pestered her about having such things during the FBI's visit. But sitting beside the equipment, a few old pictures of her accomplishments proved that she used to go hunting, trapping, sniping, and fishing as a teenager with her mother's various boyfriends. Multiple trophies, plaques, and ribbons stood proudly next to these pictures, revealing that she was also once a highly decorated member of a paintball team. But it wasn't her accomplishments that made Mary's smirk turn into a grin.

Cautiously, she pushed the cabinet aside so she had access to the wall behind it. A small door lied embedded in the wall, and a quick flick of a handle revealed a milk chute that had been sealed off on the outside. Mary seized its contents, revealing that it housed a handgun and a revolver, a few throwing knives and shuriken stars, and a handful of arrows. Then she shimmed through an opening behind the water heater and furnace, and knelt down to open a chimney cleanout access port. Outlined under a thin layer of ashes were a couple of boxes of ammunition and a small, flexible wooden bow. She retrieved the contents and hurried back into the soundproof room. She laid down all of her weaponry on the piano's bench and proceeded over to the oil painting. With delicate hands, she removed the painting and placed it on the floor in a corner. Behind the picture was concrete that had been dug out to seal up rusted old pipes. Here lied a pile of used bullets and casings, a pair of head earmuffs, earplugs, protective eye wear, and rolled up paper posters that bore civilian targets. She put on the earplugs and earmuffs, took out a single poster and secured it over the hole in the wall. She turned on the booming thrash metal again and cranked the volume even louder than before that it shook the floorboards below.

Mary slid the piano bench over to her mark and took her place to begin. In a flurry of beige, she already cleared the bench of bladed weaponry in a matter of moments. Each knife and shuriken nailed the bullseye area on the dartboard by narrowly missing the existing darts, but she had already assumed an archer's stance before noticing. Again, with deadly precision, she cleared through her targets on the dartboard with the arrows. In a matter of minutes, she was already down to her last remaining weapons. She casually loaded each empty firearm, fingering each bullet, as a child would savor a piece of candy with its tongue. Now in position, she eyed the custom civilian target that she had made herself. Unlike an official shooting range, the civilian had specific bullseye targets across its body, and one by one, Mary cleanly shot through each objective. Directly through the brain, in between the eyes, the Adam's apple, every vital organ, and every type of joint that the diagram possessed. Her face remained devoid of any human emotion; completely immune to the potential butchery she would have caused an actual person. Despite the minor recoil, she never flinched at the gunfire, as her posture was a stiff as a statue.

With a sigh that was neither of disapproval nor relief, she returned everything to its original resting place and turned off the music. Leaving the simulated carnage behind her, she returned to the main level and proceeded on with her daily practice. Her routine consisted firstly of taking a shower, so she continued on into the main floor bathroom. The well-kept restroom consisted of a sink and vanity unit, a toilet, and a claw foot bathtub and shower set. Roughly ten minutes after entering the curtained tub, the steaming smell of exfoliating soap and moisturizing shampoo and conditioner signified that she was clean and shaven for another day of life. A quick run down with a towel absorbed the excess water off of her waterproof shell and she clothed herself with a white bathrobe. She left the bathroom to rejoin her living room to carry on with the remaining three quarters of her morning routine.

She was quick to turn on a compact cassette player that serenaded her with Pachelbel's Canon in D Major played on the piano. Despite the beautiful performance, the hisses and sudden pitch changes revealed that this was either an unprofessionally made recording, or that it had been simply listened to countless times. Either way, Mary was unfazed by the imperfections as she moved through her routine as flawlessly as the pianist played.

She started the composition by making her bed, which was more or less just neatening the covers and repositioning the pillows. Next she sought out and placed her attire on top of the newly made bed. Today she would wear a hooded sweater with tidy jeans, black socks, and of course under garments. She headed back into the restroom, but before starting her remaining bathroom duties, she pulled out and plugged in a flat iron hair straightener. She continued her routine by rubbing deodorant on her under arms, brushing her teeth with an anti-plaque, whitening tooth paste, rinsing her mouth with a mint-flavored mouthwash (her face contorted at the alcohol), and scrubbing her face clean of dead skin cells with an exfoliating face wash on a buff puff sponge.

Normally she would dry her face and return to the living room to get dressed, but today she had to put her mask on. She removed the war paint from its designated cupboard in the vanity and placed it alongside the sink's handles. Eye shadow, blue eyeliner, volume mascara, a moisturizing concealer, and clear lip-gloss all consisted of her camouflage face paint. She started elegantly with bold blue eye shadow, the green portion of the dual-sided kit completely untouched as she despised wearing the color green. Eyeliner and mascara quickly followed and she finished off her face by smoothing out the concealer over the dark circles under her slightly baggy eyes. Without bothering to inspect the hair straightener's temperature, she began straightening out her naturally wavy hair. Soon her hair was ridden of the pesky waves and her routine was just about complete.

She returned to the living room and prepared to get dressed as the final measures of Canon in D Major hymned. She always put her clothing on in a specific order, bottom to top; socks over her bare feet, underwear and jeans exchanged with her bathrobe, and finally her bra and sweatshirt. She brushed her hair back into a palm to tie it up into a tight ponytail that edged the top of her head. She finished off the look with a few sprays from her lavender and vanilla scented perfume. Her nostrils flared with approval at the smell of tranquility.

The last note played, signifying that her morning ritual was completed. She took a moment to recuperate, seemingly lost within each note that had played throughout the entire piece of harmony. Then she gathered her purse wallet, a handful of books, a grocery list written in neat cursive, a folder labeled "Banking & Taxes", and a portable cassette player with headphones. She carefully placed and organized them into the top compartment of a backpack and prepared to leave the premises. With the fall weather now at full strength, she felt comfortable going outdoors as she was able to blend in with society more easily than usual. She put on her platform, women's combat boots that automatically granted her four inches in height, and then put on and buttoned up a luxurious leather great coat that hid her entire body aside from the heel lifts of her boots. She retrieved a pair of women's leather gloves from her coat pockets and put them on delicately. Then she pulled her backpack over her shoulders and turned her head to the clock. It was nine fifty eight.

She decided to wait until the Agents had finished their surveillance, and then she would leave. Ten o'clock struck the clock, and the black, 1965 Lincoln Continental passed by as expected. She blinked with skepticism as she noticed the missing Agent had resumed his place in the back seat. Perhaps he was there before, but she didn't notice because she was still in an awakening stage? Or maybe he was called to other business? She decided that Smith was probably forced into a coffee run, since he was the rookie after all and it was below Pierce and his partner to be subjected to such demeaning duties.

With the Agents gone, she opened the curtains of her living room and scurried to the back door of the residence. She exited the old house and entered the attached shanty that hid the back door from the unknowing eye. Locking the door behind her, she then left the garden shanty to be greeted by the oasis of her back yard. Despite being autumn, some of her flowers and other foliage managed to bloom gloriously. A newly blossomed red rose caught her attention, and she carefully picked off the selected stem to place it gently inside her backpack. Unlike the vividness of her flower garden, her vegetable garden was completely barren. She had recently harvested her bounty to fuel herself during the last few weeks of hibernation. Although she would never admit it directly to them, the Agents had scared her into hiding and forced her to scavenge steadily until there were no consumable resources left.

Even with a seven-foot fence surrounding the back of her property, an alley cat managed to call this his home in exchange for keeping unwanted pests out of the premises. He cooed at the sight of her, rolling onto his back with dead leaves sticking to his surprisingly well-kept black fur.

"Good morning Shadow," she spoke to him like an equal while rubbing his head, "I see you've kept your end of the bargain, as always."

He meowed in response, although the purring that had since vocalized at her gentle touch muffled it. She was referring to a half eaten mouse carcass that sat at the shanty doorstep.

She walked over and stepped onto a soft, bare spot in the soil of her garden that backed onto the wooden panel fence. She turned her attention back to Shadow, whom had since begun grooming himself.

"I don't plan on being overly long, just have a few errands to run." Even though he was clearly uninterested in the conversation, she justified herself, "They've been put off long enough already."

With the assistance of a nearby rock, she jumped up and pulled herself over the fence. For a short and averagely weighted female of her age, she prided herself in physical strength but her body shape proved that she clearly detested cardio. Releasing her grip from the solid wood, she dropped down into the alleyway that trailed the rear of her side of the street. It was an isolated labyrinth that led to focal locations such as convenience stores, small parks, a postal office, bus stops, but most importantly, the subway station on the outskirts of Union Hill that was a welcoming sign into Baldwin Heights.

Unlike the other residents of Union Hill, Mary took her business to the evidently more upper class neighborhood of Pillsen that resided on the opposite side of the Baldwin Heights. While she respected the friendliness of those that surrounded her, Pillsen consisted primarily of the young and maturing business class that were too caught up in their spreadsheets to spark social interaction. She had an acute appreciation for the sound of clicking keyboards of laptop computers that every businessman or woman came equipped with in Pillsen.

Moving swiftly through the wooden and chain-linked maze of twists and turns that she had become familiar with over her lifetime, she easily found her way at the subway station entrance. This portion of the "Orange Line" subway system wasn't particularly impressive, as it had become rundown and begging for restoration. But just like some of the inhabitants' houses of Baldwin Heights, it remained neglected due to the hive minded workers whose definitions of vacations were trips to the local eateries. It already housed a considerable amount of homeless people, which contributed to keeping her wallet inside of her backpack rather than in a purse.

After exchanging a faint smile with the teller, she flashed her subway transit pass and proceeded onto the train. She found a window seat and granted her backpack the seat next to her. At this time of day, the youth and working population had already dispersed to their social prisons for the next several hours. This left only her, some retirees, the part-timers, and the welfare leeches on the public transit. Preferring to avoid the dim-witted dialogue that the other passengers would offer, she pulled out her cassette player and sheltered her ears with the oversized headphones. She pressed the play button, placed the electronic device on her lap, and used her backpack as an armrest. She averted her eyes to the window, finding refuge in the blurred dark walls of the tunnels rather than the withered faces of her fellow commuters.

She pulled out a golden pocket watch to check the time. About twenty minutes had passed and now the orange tiled walls of the last Baldwin Heights stop rolled into view as the train came to a screeching halt. Relieved, she freed her ears of the headphones and hurried off of the train before the subway operator could force her into another five minutes with the underbelly of civilization. She tucked her cassette player back into her backpack and returned the bag to its rightful spot on her backside.

Once she was at ground level, Baldwin Heights ended and Pillsen stood directly before her. Mary breathed in the refreshing air, savoring the crisp richness that Pillsen had to offer even with its air quality. It was here that the city's skyline truly formed as the beginning of a grid of skyscrapers spread across countless blocks. Before them were elegant cafés and restaurants that housed the office workers who were on break from their overpaying jobs. The smells of their premium roasted caffeinated beverages and delicate pastries instantly made Mary's mouth water. She wiped her mouth, pretending to cough, but was pleased to find herself drool free. Her stomach remained empty due to her food shortage crisis, and she decided it was a well-invested decision to visit one of the local cafés.

While she had tried every café Pillsen had to offer in a ten-block radius of her subway stop, she decided it was only fair to the businesses to alternate her transactions with every outing. This time she would pay the "LAN Café" a visit. It was the closest cafeteria to a software mega-corporation known as "MetaCortex". Checking her pocket watch again to register it was ten thirty-two, she expected finding a seat of her own would prove to be impossible, considering the company's employees took their 'water cooler' breaks there instead. However the LAN Café was next in line to gain her money so she had no other feasible option.

Blending in with the ocean of black trench coats and suits that the people of Pillsen wore, she proceeded across the streets at the designated crosswalks, at the designated traffic commands. It wasn't long before her and a few other uniforms branched off and entered the LAN Café. She allowed her followers to order before her, gaining small nods of gratitude as she pondered at her own craving. But before she could reeducate herself with the menu, it was already her turn.

"What can I get for you today, Miss?" Inquired a well-kept man who appeared to be no older than Mary. "Would you like to try one of our freshly baked danishes?"

"No… Thanks, Sir. I believe I'll go with your chocolate chip waffles and hash brown combo. With a medium double, double of your English breakfast tea." She answered, almost surprised at her own words as her order was something only fit for a child.

"S-sure, Miss. We can have those ready in about five minutes, if that is alright by you?" He was just as taken aback as she was at the demand.

"That will be fine. Take your time. My thanks to the Chef!" She grinned, trying to cover up her spontaneous order with an outgoing attitude. "I'm just going to seat myself, if you don't mind?"

"N-not at all Miss, thanks for your understanding!" He replied, the bizarre order making his warm smile fade.

She amazingly found a spot in a corner booth, which was usually occupied by the head honchos of MetaCortex. Almost reluctantly, she sat in the booth that was meant to seat six. However, if the proprietors entered the restaurant, she wouldn't object to moving, as it was basically their unwritten yet designated spot. A smirk crossed Mary's face as she thought of the dilemma. They were creatures that couldn't adapt well to change and although the thought of their blinded frustration was amusing, public social tension didn't exhilarate her.

While she waited for her breakfast, the smell of burning batter filling her nose, she enjoyed the symphony of keyboard clicks and newspaper pages turning. The otherwise attuned silence of the restaurant was only broken when someone ordered at the front, or gathered their belongings to leave the facility or visit the restroom. From what Mary congregated during her visits to Pillsen, this populace's primary function was to trace errors and to check numbers in various accounts with the assistance of their laptops. Each member was as ambitious as the next, striving to be orderly in this delicate ecosystem of concrete, regulations, and eau de toilette.

A woman that she had granted a place in line earlier nervously stepped over to her table, holding her opened laptop computer. The screen trailed with multiple windows that appeared to be downloading an infinite amount of files.

"Miss, I hate to be a bother but… I have to use the restroom." The young woman appeared lost amongst her uniformed peers. "I was wondering if you could watch my computer for just a moment?"

Mary gave the woman a once over, immediately recognizing her clothing and jewelry as second-hand items. This woman must've spent all of her money on the posh laptop that now seemed out of place with the rest of her appearance.

"I-it's my first day. I need to download all of these documents b-but if I close my computer, it'll disrupt the session. It's a-almost done." She noted, shying away from Mary's bold stare.

Hesitant at first then quickly loosening up, Mary smiled, "Sure, I don't mind. Don't worry, it-" she nodded at the computer screen, "-all looks like a bunch of gibberish to me anyways."

"Thank you, Miss." The woman was less anxious now and set her laptop on Mary's table. "I won't be long."

Mary nodded and directed her attention to the man carrying her breakfast in a Styrofoam container and sleeved paper coffee cup.

She pulled out her wallet from her backpack that now sat beside her, retrieved a ten-dollar bill, and returned the wallet to the bag.

Trading the money with the food, she beamed, "Keep the change."

Before he could respond, her mind had been redirected into the steaming breakfast. While a few bites off of the hash browns made the meal worthwhile enough, the chocolate chip infused waffles looked delectable. She charily picked up a single battercake and took a fair sized mouthful. After a thorough chewing and ingestion, she soothed her throat with a sip of her English breakfast tea. It was apparent that the highlight of her breakfast was the result of the burning smell earlier. The Chef had cleverly covered up the mistake with a thin coating of butter and dark chocolate to hide the crunchy scorched backsides of the waffles. She supposed that's what she deserved for ordering a platter of filth and high cholesterol.

After a few more sips off of her tea, it had become official. She had lost her appetite. Not entirely because of the burn victims of an inexperienced baker, but now because she faced a familiar demon. The black screen that haunted her desktop computer the night of the Agents visit had now enveloped this woman's laptop. The pulsating green cursor pierced into Mary's skull with each blink and left a sickening specimen of bile in her mouth.

"It's been three weeks but you've finally joined us for tea, Alice... You're very late. Very late." Mary managed to split her attention away to ensure no one else was experiencing the same problem on his or her laptop, before the screen continued typing. "You cannot hide from us. Your answer is waiting outside when you are willing to face it."

"Miss?" The woman had returned from the bathroom. "Are you alright?"

Mary forced herself to look at the woman, her eyes deglazing in the process.

"Y-yeah, just… My breakfast isn't settling right. I think your-" her eyes returned to the screen, which was now normal. "Your download is complete."

The woman reclaimed her laptop with a bright smile, "Yes! It is. Wow, that was quicker than I thought… Anyways, thanks again."

The woman closed her laptop and left the restaurant, leaving Mary to skim through the surrounding grounds of the LAN Café's exterior. The terrorists could be anywhere and anyone as waves of dark ensembles passed by in intervals. Even the vehicles all appeared and reappeared at what seemed to be designated points in time.

Mary's stomach felt like it was a boiling kettle ready to burst, knowing she had to go outside one way or another. Her errands weren't going to manage themselves, and unfortunately for her, she had to pay her taxes, she had to drop off her nearly overdue books, she had to buy groceries, and she had to pay homage to a particular site. There was no one left in this world that could help her, nor anyone she would entrust with such principal duties. Her mind momentarily drifted to the thought of Agent Smith and perhaps he could provide some assistance with her endeavors. Then she scowled at her own reflection in the pocket watch she had subconsciously taken out of her pocket. It was ten fifty-nine. Agent Smith wouldn't help her. Why would an FBI agent -even a trainee- help her? They were supposed to be protecting her as some sort of ham-handed service in this so-called investigation, and nothing more. She imagined that the Agents probably hadn't even noticed her absence yet. _Probably… Hopefully._

A burst of courage filled her veins, knowing that there was only one way out of this: Through the café's front door. What lied outside of it was beyond her jurisdiction and she had to carry on with her daily routine. Resisting it was futile. But what bothered her the most wasn't that a terrorist group was spying on her, nor was she disturbed that the FBI had tapped her only means of communication with the outside world from the safety of her home. What troubled her most was that she had become as desensitized and hopelessly reliant on customary schedules as the uniforms surrounding her. The only reason that pushed her through the daily grind now was her unresolved desire for a sense of being, like Smith had determined. It was a dangerous motive to abide by, but it was the sanest choice in a mercilessly practiced world.

Dignity allowed color to return to Mary's face as she reentered the herd of cultured people, carrying her unfinished breakfast in each hand. As she continued her route towards the bank, citizens joined and escaped the flowing black sea seamlessly, as if their presences never actually existed. She wondered if anyone even recognized her from the many years of visiting, but then, she never bothered to truly acknowledge anyone else either. The only hints that she knew her existence touched others was when she would hear someone reciting (with sarcasm) the odd excerpt from her newspaper columns or the occasional commentator stating that the business section should expand over the life section. However she knew that nobody would be mentioning "Lady Aristotle" this visit as she hadn't converged with her computer since that night when her life began a steep, spiraling descend. It meant that her leave of absence was wearing thin, it meant that there was no paycheck, and that meant she would have to breach her trust fund for the first time since her mother's passing. But if it meant she still remained in control of her sanctuary, then she'd deal with the consequences.

The bank was across the street now but she had to wait her turn as vehicles had the right of way. Rather than concentrating on the traffic light like the rest of the assemblage, her eyes trailed off to follow a squirrel that decided to jump the curb. She watched with indistinguishable horror and succumbed admiration for this rodent that defied the law she complied by. Through solid yellow lines and under speeding metal boxes, the squirrel danced its way through six lanes of traffic. Its sporadic movements tugged at her heart as she wished it a safe passage, but her mind forbid her to pity it if it did merge with the asphalt below. Luckily the squirrel chose its timing well and made it successfully to the opposite sidewalk to scurry up a tree to join its dray of offspring, supplying them with a bounty of peanuts. If it weren't for the people clipping at her heels, she wouldn't have realized the light had changed and a frown veiled her face. She followed suit alongside her travelers, envying the squirrel for exposing the animosity she felt towards humanity, even if it was only evident to herself.

Sitting below the tree was an unkempt and gritty man who held out a makeshift sign reading "Will take verbal abuse for change" to passers by. Everyone who walked passed paid him no attention, his or her eyes locked onto a cellular phone or to the next targeted crosswalk. Despite his outgoing efforts, he was no match for the primary function of this collective, guarded mentality that progressed in hordes. Mary managed to work her way against the smug current towards the homeless man with minor nudges and shoe scrapes to her and others. As she approached the man, freed from the black swarm of uniforms, she stopped to catch her breath. A rigid mugginess had ceased to be and she realized she had been relieved of a form of suffocation. The man's disheartened brown eyes widened with surprise for a brief moment at this then returned to normal, bracing himself for a vocal beating.

Mary opened her mouth to speak, but noticed his grimace that he tried to hide behind relaxed, closed eyes. If her ears weren't mistaken, she could hear him whimpering ever so softly. Silently, she placed her breakfast container and tea in both of his grubby hands.

"You really should smile more. You'd stand out more than these poor sobs." Mary's voice was sweet yet boomed with dominance.

The man was speechless as he met her cold stare, shocked that the rest of her face was curled into a warming smile.

"T-t-th-thank you, Miss." He finally replied, still puzzled by her border lining inhuman facial expression.

"My pleasure," her response immediately followed his. "Take care."

With a little nod, she merged back into the stream of office workers and proceeded towards the bank. Out of the homeless man's sight, she quickly found a hand sanitizer bottle in one of her coat pockets. Lathering on the alcoholic gel, she found that the smell also sanitized the stench of body odor and cologne that encircled her. _Interesting._ Once satisfied with her hands, she dug out her pocket watch again. It was eleven ten. She replaced it back into her coat to exchange it for her leather gloves that she had forgotten to put back on. After focusing on slipping them over her stubby hands, she noticed she had finally reached her destination and proceeded to enter the bank.

Roughly fifteen minutes had passed and Mary had regrouped with the business convoy, her financial matters dealt with for another month's time. Unlike many people of her age group, she was in a highly stable economic condition, so even the slightest of debt made her unnecessarily wary. Needless to say, if her cash withdrawals didn't cover a cost, she would go without rather than using her debit or credit card.

Her next stop in line was the library, as she could drop off her books and exchange them for new ones without worrying about crushing the groceries she would have to buy. But she reconsidered as she suspected that the terrorists knew her outing routine as well as herself. Much to her dismay, she had become a creature of habit, and she knew all too well about the advantages of hunting prey when you knew their habits and routines. She decided to zigzag through the order of errands in the hopes of fazing her predator. She forced herself into the opposite lane of office workers and walked towards a massive eight-way intersection. Confusion agitated her face, her mind refusing the foreign agenda that she had imposed herself into.

While there was nothing in particularly significant about it besides the immense traffic flow that passed through, this intersection was the chalk outline that haunted Mary's dreams. It reminded her of why she had to obey the law and why she had to question those who chose not to. Mary calmly knelt beside the closest traffic light, and desolately lifted her gaze from her backpack to its galvanized steel. A single wilted rose snagged to its surface by garden string shivered in the light fall breeze. She carefully replaced the dead flower with her new one and bowed her head respectfully, allowing for a moment of silence while the world continued to function around her. She opened her eyes to find her pocket watch cradled in both hands. It was eleven forty-two.

Later on after another twenty-five minutes had passed, Mary had successfully purchased enough groceries to feed herself for the next three weeks. She determined that if she could bide for nearly another month, then perhaps there was a sliver of hope that her situation would blow over and she could continue on with a semi-normal life. Most of the food was canned and processed, which weighed down her backpack significantly to the point where she knew it would chafe her shoulders raw. But it was a small price to pay for avoiding the daily grind she currently found herself subject to. Because she was feeling adventurous, she gave in to impulses and bought herself a lottery ticket and a pack of gum. But moments after leaving the store, she regretted the purchases as her mind checked in, telling her that gambling was for brainless fools and that gum was nothing more than a rubberized drug fit for cattle. She stuffed them into her coat pockets and tried to ignore the byproduct of her wasted money. Instead, she focused on her pocket watch. It was sevens minutes after twelve. She had become so involved with altering her schedule, that she outwardly forgot about the reason why she changed it in the beginning. Like a chameleon, it allowed her to blend back in with her peers unnoticed.

Now only the library remained between her and the return to Union Hill. The knot in her stomach had completely loosened, as she knew she would be home in time to retrieve her mail at one thirty as scheduled. It was the only time of day that she left the house, even on garbage days. It was unlike her to be late, just as it was unlike her to wait three weeks to restock her food supply or return her books. She knew that change was hard to adapt to, but she reconsidered that sometimes sacrifices needed to be made in order to maintain a balanced lifestyle. Like the squirrel risking its life earlier to rejoin and feed its family, she needed to look out for her own wellbeing. But her personal welfare was on a constant decline, and if the Agents weren't spying on her, she had slim hopes that anyone would bother to notice her existence. She hoped that if the FBI somehow managed to discover her missing presence, that they would understand this. As much as she wished she could be sometimes, she wasn't a machine, and will alone wasn't enough to fuel a human's survival. At the same time, she wanted them to pick up on her absence. _They'd send out search parties, detection dogs, and an order to publicize the human description for immediate press release. Everyone would be looking and everyone would be worried. Once found safe and sound, everyone would be happy. Maybe even… _The thought trailed off when she realized she arrived at the librarian's counter.

"Hello Mary!" Called an elderly woman sitting behind the counter, her face bright and cheerful. "Those anatomy and physiology books must've been enthralling to take you three weeks. Did I finally stump the great mind of the one and only Miss Mary Dianne Simms?"

The woman chuckled at her own sarcasm and accepted the books that Mary presented her from the depths of her overflowing backpack.

"Looks like you're about to feed an army. Are you already preparing for Thanksgiving?" She placed the books in the return bin on her desk, and pressed further, "You know you're always welcome at my house. You don't have to eat by yourself."

Mary offered a thin smile and replied, "I know and I thank you, Mrs. Turner. But really, I'm fine. Now then, have any new books arrived since my last visit?"

"Nothing worth reading unless you've taken up babysitting. Oh! We did get some new computer programming books that the techies can't get enough of. I'd recommend any of those."

"I appreciate the suggestion, even though I know you're just trying to 'stump' me as usual. But today I actually have a request," Mary lifted her gaze and scanned the surrounding library for wandering eyes and ears. When she found the room secure, she continued, "Do you have any books on the FBI or any intelligence agencies?"

Mrs. Turner instantly replied with a blank stare and Mary began to nervously play with her pocket watch.

"Now that's something I haven't heard in a long time… You haven't mentioned becoming a FBI agent since you were as tall as your mother's waist. Are you really considering applying?"

Mary's eyes floated passed the librarian to the cityscape beyond the closest window. It still bustled lively with men, women, and machines alike. She found her voice as a familiar classic vehicle came into view, "Yeah… Something like that."

"Well, just give me a moment and I can se-" The kind old woman began but was quickly cut off.

Mary's eyes darted back to meet hers, "I'll just take the computer books! Uh… Please, and thank you. Mrs. Turner."

Completely dumbfounded, the Librarian seized four new encyclopedia-sized computer-programming hardbacks from her return pile. She stamped the library cards, placed them in Mary's opened backpack, and zipped up the bag as if she were an all-in-one pit crew. Mary flung the backpack onto her backside, and looked out the window again. The Lincoln had vanished into thin air and Mary felt a sudden burst of adrenaline. She slipped her pocket watch back into her coat, her focus glued on the street before her.

"Mary… Are you all right? You look like you've just seen a ghost!" Mrs. Turner softly inquired, reaching to comfort Mary's hand.

Mary pulled away, even with her attention not facing the librarian. "I-I-I… I have to go. I'm very late. Er, I'm going to be late! Farewell, Mrs. Turner!"

Mary hiked out of the library as fast as her short legs could carry her. Trying not to create a scene, she merged back in with the ever-growing crowd of business people. Her heart raced, and sweat beads formed at her temples. She felt fortunate that at least someone was paying attention to her, but she was reminded that not only was the FBI watching her, but a terrorist organization too. She could hardly believe that she had forgotten that she was being hunted. _Damn routine._ She wedged her way through the mass of commuters until she found herself leading the pack. Her errands were finished and all that mattered now was getting back onto the subway to return home. _Damn mail._ Her and her followers had to halt to a stop when a traffic light changed, allowing for the lunch break travelers to pass through. Anxiety was brewing throughout her body, and her knees weakened to the point where the weight of her backpack tugged her into the worker standing behind her, creating a domino effect of irritation. _Damn humans._

Standing at the curb, a mail bicyclist pulled to a stop beside her and got off his bike. She nodded at him, appreciating the fact that he actually obeyed the traffic laws unlike many bicyclists who she deemed menaces to the road. She redirected her attention to the opposite side of the road where the people and cars alike were also waiting their turn to cross. Through her keen eye for detail, she spotted an imperfection amidst the contradicting sea of uniforms. Then Mary's heart sank. A man clothed in a gray pinstripe suit and sharp dark sunglasses was staring directly back at her. Even with his shielded gaze Mary could tell that he was preying upon her as he had the distinct posture of a prowling predator. To everyone else, he appeared as just another man who moderately blended in with the working force. To her though, he stuck out like a throbbing femur – which she had now obtained from pure trauma.

She leaned closer towards the mailman and whispered, "Excuse me, Mister. Are you on the clock right now?"

"Wha-?" He turned to respond, but was cut off by Mary hopping onto his bike as the light changed. "Hey!"

"I'm just borrowing it! Go to the ROM at Clark and Belmont, I'll leave it behind there." Mary sped off as the pinstripe suited man sprinted towards her. "Thanks Mister!"

Her legs pumped viciously at the pedals as she continued a straight path, her pursuer hot on her trail despite being on foot. As she made progress across the massive block, she noticed that many of the office workers were actually paying attention to her. _Of course they pay attention now._ The traffic light ahead turned red and she shot around the corner to avoid stopping, prompting a car horn to blare behind her. She was now going the opposite direction of the subway station, as a directional sign for it blurred by in her pursuit. Then she hit a construction zone and was forced to rejoin the sideway. Weaning her way through people, she managed to launch through an amber light to gain another block. She turned her head back to find the man running through the middle of the street, dodging traffic like the squirrel from earlier.

Mary pressed on, ignoring the burning sensation that shot through her legs and signified that her hamstrings could split at any moment. She regretted not training for intense cardio such as this, but she felt vaguely comforted by the thought of being able to land an uppercut at the pursuer's jaw. Through another three blocks, she was finally back on track towards the subway station. Her focus had remained entirely on the road ahead and in her blind spots now, as she couldn't afford a split second in the traffic to look back. The cans inside her backpack rattled and rolled with every slight bump in the asphalt, sometimes causing her to swerve onto road into traffic. More car horns alerted the urban area of her presence and she decided she needed to proceed on foot.

The ROM, which was an English abbreviated form of "Restaurant du Mondes Das", came into view. It was a five star restaurant that was apparently one of many businesses run by the French owner, and also one of the most impossible places to get reservations to. Mary cut through an alleyway and parked the mailman's bike behind the building. She fished out the lottery ticket and pack of gum she had bought impulsively and placed them on its seat. It was the least she could do for 'borrowing' this man's means of transportation and livelihood. She knelt beside it and took off her backpack, relieving her aching shoulders as she whimpered in agony. She attempted to massage herself but cried as her shoulders were skinned raw.

As Mary began to catch her breath, her ears tingled as casual footsteps approached her from both ends of the alley. Their thin shadows began to cross and before she could face them, Mary tossed her backpack aside and sprung up onto a fire escape ladder. She ignored her quaking pain and climbed to the top of the four-storey building, the predators directly behind her. She dashed across the rooftop to only find a dead end and a three-way plunge into having her skull merge with the pavement below. She turned back to face her enemy. It was the man in the pinstripe suit. The other pursuer must have served their purpose by cutting off her escape route. The man slowly walked towards her as she edged the rooftop to the street below.

"Mary, please listen. We don't want to hurt you. We want to help you!" His voice was cool and inviting. "You may not realize it now, but you're in great danger."

Mary clearly did not want to listen as she paced on the edge, avoiding the view down by straining her eyes on his sunglasses. Her body trembled immensely, but even she didn't know if it was from fear or pain.

"If you come with us, you can receive your answer. You can be free." He extended a hand towards her. "He is waiting for you."

Mary's head nodded as her eyes skipped back and forth between his hand and his face. Then she made her decision. With her eyes still on his sunglasses, she stepped off of the edge and fell out of sight. He dashed after her to find she had landed on another fire escape stairway about a storey below. She was quickly making her way down to ground level when he jumped after her. He too landed on the metal escape route, shaking the contraption with his body weight to throw her off balance. Slightly stunned, she managed to safely climb her way down and reunite with the pavement below. Without hesitation, she jogged on into a sprint as her face turned from a deep crimson into a murky purple. Sweat flew from her forehead and mouth and each breath proved to be another stab into her lungs.

To her delight, at the end of the current sidewalk sat the black 1965 Lincoln Continental. As she gained ground across what seemed to be a marked out runway, a glimmer of hope brightened her weakening eyes as she noticed three figures sat inside the classic vehicle. She ignored the terrifying sound of her predator's feet gaining ground and opened the car's suicide doors, and threw herself inside.

Just when she thought her life had hit rock bottom, another cement block pulled her under. Sitting beside her in the car was a teenager with short brown hair wearing a black pinstripe suit similar to her pursuer's and a black ribcage t-shirt. His sunglasses had been removed and placed in his front breast pocket to reveal his blue eyes. Her jaw was frozen open and she remained speechless, even when her predator sat on the seat beside her and slammed the car door shut. The vehicle jerked into movement, and the shotgun passenger and driver remained silent.

"Hello Odessa, it's been a long time," spoke the young man, meeting her eyes with a warm smile. "I never thought I'd see you again."

"Mouse…? I… I – I, I thought you were dead... I thought you committed-" Mary's eyes brimmed with tears and she thrust herself into a tight embrace with him. "You never returned my messages, and when I called your parents they acted like you never existed. Like they were trying to cover up a suicide…"

Mouse gently pushed her off of him so they could speak face-to-face. "I told you I was leaving for awhile, but I would be back for you. We pinky swore, remember? Before I moved away back in grade six."

Mary nodded with quivering smile. Then with a sudden wave of brute force, she open-handedly slapped him directly across the face.

"Who the hell do you think you are, you little bastard? I don't hear from you in years and you come back thinking I'm going to fall head over heels for you like some dumb blonde just because you can hack into my computer? You think that turns me on? You digital pimpin' prick! Because of your pranking I have the FBI on my case, and your cult friends here! And I hope you're happy. I haven't been able to eat Tastee Wheat ever since your idiotic analogy about everything tasting like chicken!" Mary had cooled off from the chase, but now she was burning with infuriation. "Take your computer bullshit and go jerk off on your own time!"

The driver and other two passengers exchanged smirks as if justifying Mary's statement. The only other female in the car chuckled, which instantly drew Mary's attention. She was a middle-aged woman with red hair that had been slicked back into a tight bun.

"So that's why you normally stay behind all the time, hmm 'Digital Pimp'?" Mocked the woman with a nod of agreement from her colleagues.

"Shut up Flare! Odessa and I go way back, we've known each other since preschool. I've told you before, I had to let her know! I had to…" Mouse trailed off, meeting Mary's gaze again.

"Please stop calling me that. We quit roleplaying when you started writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of out-of-character dialogue about how the world wasn't really everything that it was led up to be. It was you who said that everything that exists today is all part of some government experiment!" Mary gathered herself as she felt the others tensing up. "You can take all these Alice in Wonderland references, 'Morpheus', and this whole bloody cult and shove it up your scrawny ass! Now let me out of this god damned car, and piss off out of my life you pervy piece of shit."

"But… Mary… Please, listen. You don't know who you're up against. You don't know what they want, and we don't know what they want, but they're after you. The only reason why you're alive right now is that you must hold something very valuable to them." Mouse put her backpack into her hands, which shocked her that it was even in his possession. "Please, just think about it. Not for me. For your sake."

Mary snatched her backpack and hissed, "Go rot in Hell."

The vehicle slid to a stop in front of her subway station destination and she barged out of the car. She trudged through the station with her eyes glued to the ground, even when she found a vacant spot on the train. With her backpack resting at her blistered feet, Mary opened it to seek out her cassette player. But before she could find it, she was horrified to discover a cellular phone similar to the one the FBI had found in her house had been planted inside her bag. Her face twisted deeper into a frown and she whipped the phone under the seats out of her sight. Then she dug out and found refuge in her cassette player. When her ears were guarded from the mid-day rowdiness of mixed-class passengers, she closed her eyes to avoid eye contact as tears rolled down her face. Her shoulders shook with both sorrow and tenderness, and a muffled whine emitted from her closed lips. She hated causing scenes, but luckily most people were preoccupied to notice her despair.

All except one person. Behind lines of seated passengers and in between standing commuters was a suited man whom Mary would have instantly recognized if she were looking for him. With a quick alteration of his dark green business suit, Agent Smith raised a hand to his coiled earpiece as he had his target locked. An intoxicating and masculine fragrance drifted into Mary's nostrils, reminding her of the cologne that she had smelt on Smith's jacket when the two had spoken privately. Mary slowly opened her eyes at the scent, as well as the fact that she felt a presence watching her. She raised her gaze and scanned the car for the owner of the gawking face and the possible source of the smell, only to find the commuters were engrossed with their own worlds to mind her. Like an apparition, the FBI agent had vanished into nothingness like a midsummer's night breeze.

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**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is my first fanfiction story that I have ever written... _Constructive reviews_would be highly appreciated!


	4. Chapter 4

**AUTHOR'S NOTES: **This chapter formally introduces Morpheus as well as hinting at Mary's darker side.

**Fun Fact:** Metallica's _Master of Puppets_ album was one of the leading inspirational factors behind creating this fanfic. I also figured since the Wachowski's used the 'thrash' metal of Rob Zombie in the first film, why not Metallica?

* * *

A strong cold breeze entered through a cracked open window and slapped Mary's sleeping face awake. She painfully opened her eyes and was quickly reminded of why the window was open in November. The sharp smell of drying oil paint stung her nostrils and she faintly growled. The entire living room had been painted white with primer and most of her furnishings were shielded with old blankets and plastic shower curtains.

It had been two weeks since her encounter with the Terrorists. As before being forced out of hibernation, Mary devoted her time to cleaning up and rearranging the house, reading, playing countless hours of video games, and now even going as far as painting over the original wallpaper in her home. Anything to deprive her mind of her current predicament between the law and the delinquent cult was a good idea, even if it had cost her a job. Her computer had a deceased façade, both its power cable and the dial-up connection pulled from its tower. Amongst freshly printed real estate booklets and travel sections of newspapers, her library books sat beside the vacant monitor. She had read through each at least five times by now and was tempted to hook up her Internet again to seek more information on the FBI than she had previously found. She wondered if she had served whatever purpose she might have had for the Agents, as they had yet to make contact with her. Even if she had a purpose, what could a female who was barely out of her teenage years offer them?

Mary forced herself out of bed and into her workout uniform, preparing herself for another morning ritual. On her way into the basement she gobbled up an apple, and disposed of the remains in the laundry room before retrieving her weaponry. She returned to the acoustic room and commenced her training routine for the next two hours, the thrash metal roaring at her with songs about control and mental abuse. Afterwards, she returned upstairs to take a shower.

Walking out of the restroom wearing her bathrobe, Mary's face was curled into deep thought as she was trying to decide whether or not to risk going out to return her library books. She proceeded to the compact cassette player in the living room and was about to press the play button when a few knocks tapped at her front door. Her hands immediately clenched into fists as the knocking sounded exactly like the ones from Agent Pierce weeks before on her porch. With a stiffened posture, she cautiously made her way to the front door. When she rounded into the hallway, the morning sun silhouetted a single male figure that stood on the opposite side of the draped glass. _Smith?_

Mary unlocked and opened the door to find herself face-to-face with a Federal Express deliveryman. She immediately noticed a thin envelope under his arm as he offered her a clipboard with parcel documentation.

"Mary Simms?" He asked, his gruffly voice revealing that he had not had his morning coffee yet.

"Yes…" She finally answered after a pregnant pause.

"I have a package here for you. You'll have to sign for it." He beckoned her with a pen.

She folded her arms, and stated, "I haven't made any purchases. Where's it from? Who is it from?"

The courier checked the envelope to reply with, "It's a gift. There's no return address. It just says it's a gift."

Roused with irritation, Mary scribbled her signature onto the papers and seized her package.

"Have a good morning, Miss," the man waved and returned to his truck, leaving Mary on the porch staring blankly at the unopened envelope.

She gave the neighborhood a few thorough scans before reentering her home. After securing the door again, she closed and locked up the opened living room window. Once the room was silent, aside from the odd groan from the old house, she pulled open the envelope and grabbed the object it withheld. Her face turned a ghostly white as she realized she was holding a cellular phone identical to the one Agent Smith had found upstairs and the one the Terrorists had planted inside her backpack. Upon hitting the flesh of her hand, the phone rang.

Unnerved, sweat began to trickle down Mary's forehead as she hesitated to answer. On the seventh ring, she flipped open the phone and cautiously put it to her ear. She held it there, completely speechless as reality had set in once again after its prolonged absence.

"Hello Odessa, or if you prefer Mary, I can call you that. Which ever you feel comfortable with." The male's voice was deep and soothing like a priest to a confessor. "I would have had Mouse speak with you, but he respectfully refuses. I know why you are evading us, Mary. You're scared, confused, and you believe that no one in this world understands you because you feel like an outcast. You feel you've been branded a leper to society and there's no pathological reason why. You feel that there is something wrong with this world, but you can't pinpoint what it is. You feel bound and imprisoned in this sanitarium that no one else can materialize with his or her own eyes. I know this because Mouse once felt the exact same way. We have all felt this way, including myself. You're not alone, Mary. We have deciphered your message and heard your nightly cries. We can help you, we want to help you escape this asylum."

Mary's eyes rolled across the floor to the basement door, her mind racing as she pulled an imaginary trigger at her head with the phone still in hand.

"…We both know that your getaway is not determined by a .357 Magnum bullet through your skull." His voice pressed further.

Mary's knees weakened and she stumbled to find a seat on the daybed.

"Do not sit down! We don't have time, they are coming for you!" The mysterious voice ordered her, making her jump back to her own two feet.

"Who? How do you know about-? How can you see-? Y-you don't give me orders! Who are you? Tell me or I'll smash this phone right now!" Mary snarled, beginning to pace her living room like a zoo animal.

"My name is Morpheus." He replied calmly.

"_The_ Morpheus?" She was unconvinced and growing increasingly agitated.

"Yes… Mouse has told me a lot about you, and from what I have seen you're not ready to be freed just yet. But your articles and essays say otherwise. You are looking for the answer Mary. I have that answer. But you have to trust me." Morpheus explained, trying to calm Mary.

"This 'Matrix' is apart of the answer, isn't it? Well guess what? I didn't know a damn thing about you, your stinking cult, or this Matrix bullshit until that slimy supposed best friend of mine started messing around with my computer! Explain to me, Mr. Messiah, how I just magically stumbled upon restricted government documents about you and your scam?" At this point, Mary's face was gleaming with sweat.

"You and I both know that you are not technologically inclined to find such things on your own, Mary. You can read as many books as you wish, you can act to your full potential, but you are by no means a programmer nor software developer, or a hacker." Morpheus quietly chuckled for a moment, and then continued. "Those documents were planted there, but not by us. By them."

"Them… The FBI? Why would they? I'm nothing. I'm just a small time, unemployed life columnist. What could they possibly want with me?" Her voice was concerned now as she continued to pace.

"I'm not sure, but whatever the reason is, it cannot be good. You shoul-" He was promptly cut off.

"I'm nothing! Do you understand me? Nothing! I haven't done anything…" Panic flustered her speech and face.

"It's not what you have done Mary, it's what you have said. Every written allusion you've made, every sentence that suggests the existing painful truth of reality is a count that indicts you as a criminal. You threaten something that they hold on to very dearly. As long as you breathe, you cannot hide from them and you cannot run from them. Listen carefully; if you want to escape I can guide you to sanctuary. But you have to do precisely as I say, and most importantly, you must trust me."

"And… And you think you can help me? You can make me turn my back on all of this; everything that I have ever known?" she asked in a sorrowing whisper.

"I can't make you do anything, Mary. I can steer you onto the right path, but you have to walk the path alone. Now, are you ready?"

There was an extensive silence and then Mary finally answered, "Yes."

"Quickly, go to the back door and stay in your shanty for a few moments."

Mary instead began to fumble through a dresser for clothing.

"Forget about changing your clothes, you have to go. Now!" Morpheus ordered, irritation leaking into his words. "Mary, quickly! Mov-"

As Mary had been able to pull on a quick set of semi-matching clothes, the front door suddenly thundered with heavy knocking. Out of shock, her grip loosened and she dropped the phone onto the floor.

"Mary, leave! Run! Mar-" The phone disconnected as it snapped shut against the hardwood.

Mary gathered the phone hastily and threw it and the FedEx envelope into a dresser drawer and under some clothing. After slamming it shut, Mary attempted to gather herself as best as she could before casually walking over to the front door. She instantly recognized the three bulky silhouettes that stood on the opposite side. With a faint sigh, she unlocked the door and opened it to greet the FBI Agents.

"Good morning, gentlemen. Bright and early today, hmm?" Her voice was unshaken and her posture now relaxed. "I was beginning to think that my case had been closed."

"Not yet, Miss Simms." Agent Pierce answered swiftly. "We still have a few inquiries before we can wipe your slate clean."

She stepped back from the doorway so they could enter, "Is that so? Well, you might as well come in and make yourselves at home. Ignore the paint fumes. And my apologies but we'll have to sit in the kitchen. The living room is an absolute pigsty at the moment."

Before the Agents could enter the household, they all suddenly stopped dead in their tracks. Each extended an arm to reach their earpiece, evident that someone was barking orders to them. They exchanged silent glances from one another and directed their mirrored attention back to Mary. Their faces were void of any distinguishable emotion. She stood puzzled, feeling caterpillars cocooning within the depths of her stomach.

"W-what sort of inquiries did you have in mind, Agent Pierce?" Mary questioned, attempting to remain fluent as she tried to comprehend if she was truly in danger like Morpheus had stated.

"Just some procedure follow-up questions before we can take the final steps to closing your file." Pierce replied, and then directed her attention to Smith. "Agent Smith will stay to interrogate you. Agent Bryce and I have some other matters to sort through. Have a good morning, Miss Simms."

_Interrogate? _She blinked frantically as she watched Agent Pierce and Bryce descend off of her porch. Before she could see them to the sidewalk, Smith had guided her back into the hallway where he closed the door behind them. Her thoughts drifted back in time to the conversation they had shared in her mother's room, and she subconsciously began playing with an invisible pocket watch. Smith briefly noticed this behind his sunglasses, but directed his attention to the white walls of her living room.

"What color do you intend on using, or are you leaving it white?" He asked, walking into the blanketed room to survey her paint job.

Being caught off guard by such a question, as her focus was more concerned on her dresser, she had to gather her thoughts in silence. He turned back to her, waiting for a response as she pretended to daydream.

"Um, I was thinking something along the lines of a nice burgundy, or perhaps a blissful blue. Anything but the green it used to be. I hate green."

"Why's that, Miss Simms?" Agent Smith persisted, walking slowly through the room as he scanned the furnishings behind his tinted glasses.

"It reminds me of being stuck in this gray concrete prison day in, only to be rewarded by bathing the sky in orange light pollution day out. And while I like the natural green of the wilderness, it doesn't look good on me. My mom said otherwise, saying it suited my nurturing personality… But I have to admit, I'm a bit jealous of you and your partners. I love your suits." Mary's eyes caught Smith smirk while he eyed her pile of mixed literature. "Have you ever seen the mountains about five hundred miles north of the city, Agent Smith?"

He remained focused on the books and newspapers, now flipping through her collection of literature.

"No, I haven't. But it appears that you plan to." He found the computer books that were buried and Mary's heart began to pump furiously. "Computer programming? Tell me, Miss Simms, how do you plan to reformat your computer when the power source is severed? Or is there something you wish to tell me that you've withheld from us during our previous visit?"

His austere voice pounded into her, fuelling her anxiety and making it a challenge to breathe normally. Despite this, Mary did not allow her posture or facial expressions to reveal her growing uneasiness. Instead, her eyes grew colder as she was now determined to dig deeper into Smith's psyche.

"Okay, you caught me. I may try to sell the house and see if the owner of the chateau up in the mountains will rent me out a room. Or I could just take a trip there –I don't know for how long or when. It's where my mother's boyfriends used to take me hunting and paintballing. I read books or fished and trapped while they retired to the campsite. They enjoyed their time together, and I enjoyed being off by myself – although my mother said I was sick to enjoy being alone. But I found it very therapeutic, being separated from others allowed me to discover myself as an individual." She watched Smith carefully as he walked and stopped beside her dresser. "But I'm afraid that sense of individuality vanished some time ago…"

"What became of it?" He asked, resting an arm on the top of the dresser while facing her.

"I…it conformed with society. I was a child then, but I had to grow up and pull my head out of the clouds." Her eyes fell below his gaze, recollecting why she was truly isolated from civilization. "And those books are for leisurely reading. Odd I know, but that's how I aced through dramatic arts. Knowing your character inside and out through theory and improvised practical experience. The human psyche is very much like a wild beast. But knowing the habits and routines of your prey tips the balance of the hunt in your favor."

Agent Smith was seemingly speechless at this statement, never mind motionless. Mary could have sworn he was frozen in time until he removed his sunglasses and placed them on top of the dresser. He directed his eyes to the license plate above her fireplace.

"'LU 1224'. If I'm not mistaken, an allusion to the "Luke 12:24" passage?" Smith stated.

Mary stood completely dumfounded, and replied, "Yes… 'Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?' My mother was a bit of a religious fruitcake, but ironically, that's the only piece left of the metal coffin she died in."

Mary motioned Smith to follow her into the kitchen, which he did. He took a seat at the kitchen table where a chessboard sat. She prepared a kettle for tea, and prolonged the conversation.

"Truth be told, I have a lot of respect for your line of work, Agent Smith. So much so that I even wanted to be an FBI agent like yourself for the longest time. You get to travel, meet interesting people, get to wear nice clothing, put your life on the line, you sacrifice a social life, and in your case, a relationship –unless you're not wearing a ring to protect Mrs. Smith?" Met with silence, Mary continued. "… I didn't think so. You're far too work-oriented for that."

"Miss Simms, while your compliment is appreciated, I would like to continue on with my investigation." He noted, nodding his gratitude at a cup of tea she placed in front of him. "The sooner you've cleared our analysis, the sooner you can put your past mistakes behind you and move on with your life."

Mary took her place at the table across from him, and took a sip from her own teacup. Silently, she started setting up a new game; he was white and she was black. He exhaled impatiently through his flared nostrils, and also took a sample of the hot beverage.

"Of course, and because you are a guest in my home and I want you to feel comfortable, I will oblige." The serenity of her voice refrained him from mutiny. "However, on the condition that you give me something in return. And don't say 'protection' either. Pompous Pierce has already used that and as much as I feather for more 'Suits' at my doorstep, there's something I desire more."

"We are not a babysitting service, Miss Simms. We do not negotiate our time, nor do we hand out petty calling cards. If you do not cooperate-"

"-You'll do what? My life is so far down the drain you can't possibly have any relevant leverage on me. The only thing that matters now is my mind, and my acquired skills. For all I know, you could be slipping me horse pills under my nose and everything that's happened is just a hallucination and I'm just talking to my own shadow. Well the problem is, Agent Smith, I know you haven't been slipping me saltpeter. I'm apparently too valuable to be smothered in such nonsense. But even so, how don't I know that this isn't all just a mirage? Why should I trust you over Morpheus?" By now they had started a game of chess, but Smith's focus remained on Mary.

"So they have contacted you -When was your last contact with them?" He ignored her invitation to continue the game.

"If you were doing your job properly, you wouldn't have to ask me that. As I said before, 'you scratch my back, Agent Smith, I scratch yours'. Yes, or no?" Mary waited a few moments and noticed his hands desperately trying not to coil. "I'm waiting… Truly, I want to cooperate with you but you fail to recognize that I have deadlines too. We're both amateurs waiting on fate to extend its grimy hand to us."

Smith's face slowly unfastened itself from a permanent frown as he realized what she was hinting at, "Advancement?"

"Precisely. Now, I don't know the real reason why the 'Big Brother' has taken a fondness to my work, but I can tell you that I am by no means a threat to the general public. Chaos does not interest me, and that sort of corruption would only prove to betray my very being. I want to be… a shepherd. A shepherd amongst these meek little lambs herding across the asphalt terrain." Mary explained, capturing one of Smith's bishop pieces. "Considering that you are carrying a Desert Eagle .50 Action Express pistol under that handsome, gold-lined jacket of yours, and that real FBI special agents carry Glock 22 or 23 Model pistols, you aren't being fully honest with me, Agent Smith. Which leads me back to why I should trust you over a so-called terrorist? Or maybe you and your colleagues are espionage access agents, seeking out potentials by providing profiling information that can help lead to recruitment into an intelligence service?"

"Why should we trust or invest in a rattled adolescent who suffers job instability and chronic boredom?" Smith counter offered, seizing one of her knights.

"Taking into account that you've been prying into my life for obviously a decent enough amount of time, I should already be enrolled and replacing you as a rookie agent." She took out one of his pawns. "I have over twenty-twenty vision, a valid driver's license, firearms training, no physical attachments to any other human being-"

"-No academic degrees or education. There's a difference between pretending to be a member of law enforcement, and being one, Miss Simms." He finished her qualifications list while stealing her remaining knight.

"Hmph, denying someone a career because they don't have a silly piece of paper given to them by a man in a dress. That type of mentality has always fascinated me. The hive minds of society continuously climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder, just completely blinded to the corrupted rank system." She took out another bishop and pressed on. "That's why I gave up on becoming an agent, as well as an actress. No matter how much skill you have, you are no closer to the top than the amount of bootlicking you dish out. They call it determination or loyalty. I call it a leash."

She took a few gulps out of her teacup and continued, "I went through fast food jobs, big box stores, sewing repair shops, car washes; you name it, I've worked it. Being a psychiatrist or social worker has always intrigued me, but it becomes far too easy to crack minds of the same caliber on a daily basis. I briefly thought about being a detective since in many ways it's like hunting, but then I turned to philosophy. There is no right or wrong in philosophy, but no answer. But like history, it repeats itself until you're blue in the face. I think I'm more suited towards being an espionage agent since it combines everything I love and am good at. You know, someone who does their job so well that you wouldn't notice."

Then she took a moment and started to chuckle, "Unless of course you were on the opposite end of the barrel."

"Why don't you have friends?" Smith asked sincerely, scowling at losing his queen. "Someone of your age is usually thriving in a social group of some form."

"Most people my age are ignorant, and the rest only care about how fast they can get into sinking their claws into a sexual relationship. I have had friends in the past, but I suppose I should tell you the same thing I've told each and every one of them." She met his eyes with cold saucers that could stare a hole through a wall. "I only give you one chance. If you mess it up, it's over. You deal with the consequences. There's no such thing as accidents, only the stupidity behind the choices people make. Like an animal crossing a highway, you face the possibility of becoming one with the asphalt because you chose to cross it."

Agent Smith was clearly unfazed by the statement, although he took pride in capturing another black piece.

"Family wise, they had deserted my mom before I was even thought up, and probably don't even know I exist today. Like my mother's boyfriends, many people came and left in my elementary years. Most chose to screw me over despite my warning, which resulted in their own humiliations. Some were subtle; others resulted in expulsion from school. Once high school hit, those who befriended me in class just for the use my skills to ensure themselves with positive grades were met with severe punishment. Some buried themselves into deep depression, some I was forced into saving, and others I watched as their lives fell apart –some quite literally. But it was their choices that led to their downfalls, not mine. Nor did I assist or bully them. Their choices were driven by fear, and every choice we make is a product of fear. Fear is the parliament that governs our very existence."

Now she had Smith's undivided attention as he appeared pinned to the chair. He could not comprehend the information he just heard, and it showed through both his facial expressions and body language.

"I used to see a counselor at school and eventually a decorated shrink, but they proved themselves worthy of being in the 'hot seat' – one quit his job and the other ironically ended up in a mental ward. But then I turned to philosophy and thought I had found my true therapy. One of the two best friends that I had back then at the time was interning at a local radio station. She had told the talk show host about my work and I was invited onto the show as a guest. My appearance was both a success and a disaster though. I eventually landed my now ex-columnist job through it, as well as I was humiliated and criticized on air about being openly asexual. Within a month my friend and I were not on speaking terms as I had the talk show host fired, who apparently was my friend's entry ticket to a full time job there after graduating. So now I've just chosen a life of solitude. Check."

Mary had put Smith's king piece into check using her two rook pieces. He was able to evade, but only briefly, and now it was a game of cat and mouse.

"How about you Agent Smith, do you have any friends? And I wouldn't classify Pierce and Bryce as friends. You cannot have a friendship with no base of trust –or a leash tied around your neck." She asked, watching his face grow slightly flustered, as she had almost pinned his king into a corner.

"No… I don't really have time to worry about such matters, Miss Simms." He was still struggling for words at this point, for many reasons.

Mary looked into her empty teacup and smiled, which prompted Smith to cock an eyebrow. She tilted her cup towards him to reveal tealeaves that were spread and shaped into what appeared to be a flock of birds.

"A flock of birds means exciting news in tasseography… But if they're crows or ravens it could be grief or a life alternating experience. Although personally, they look more like rooks to me because of the white at the base of their bills. A parliament of rooks, how charming." She said sarcastically, and then she stood up and peered into his empty cup. "A single crow. Sorry to break it to you but that's unlucky or bad news. Consider yourself warned."

Smith examined his deciphered tea reading and casually shrugged his shoulders.

"Divination. What nonsense. How can you believe in it? Or rather, why do you choose to believe it, Miss Simms?" He asked, his eyes following her rooks as they swarmed in on his king.

"I don't, I just find it amusing. The same way I find conspiracy theories amusing. Let me ask you this then, Agent Smith. Why does a clearly intelligent man such as yourself believe that shuffling through the daily grind really makes a difference? Do you somehow believe that living through this hostile world will reward you in the end? Do you believe that ignoring this conspiracy theory that's been pulled over our eyes will grant you some form of liberation?" She watched with a hint of delight as he refused to make eye contact with her and adjusted his tie.

"Why do you choose to wear a necktie everyday? How clever is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?" She grinned, watching his eyes slowly rise to meet hers as she made her final move. "Checkmate."

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is my first fanfiction story that I have ever written... _Constructive reviews_would be highly appreciated!


	5. Chapter 5

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **This chapter concludes Agent Smith's interrogation with Mary, and forces her to make a tough decision. It should be noted that Chapter 6 immediately follows Chapter 5.

* * *

A thunderous scraping noise alerted Mary that another day had began and she jumped out of bed to find the source of the racket. Peering through her curtains, she discovered that her neighborhood had been blanketed with a generous coating of snow overnight and that a snowplow was clearing it off of her street. The morning sun managed to seep through the dreary gray clouds and glisten against the frozen sands, making Mary squint as her body adjusted to the abrupt awakening. The wintery outdoors strengthened the white walls of her living room, providing a heavenly appearance.

Four days had passed since Mary and Agent Smith had conversed over her kitchen table. After her necktie comment, Smith had proceeded with straightforward 'yes or no' questions that Mary was obliged to answer simply, although it had only proved to bore her. He had drilled her with questions regarding her encounter with the terrorists and her recent departure from her career. Then he left, leaving her with little reassurance that she was entirely off of the hook.

Mary's eyes drifted back to her dresser. On top of it rested a one-way bus ticket that was attached to a small brochure of the mountain range Mary dreamed of revisiting. Today was the day of her bus boarding, and within nine hours she would be on the path to liberating herself from the barbed wires that wrapped around this seemingly endless city. The thought brightened her face momentarily, but she swiftly dumped the ticket into a drawer out of sight, paranoid that the mere thought of happiness would jinx her. The drawer had once held the gift that Morpheus had sent her but she had since disposed of.

She progressed through her morning ritual as normal, fooling herself into believing that she would repeat it again the following day to minimize fantasizing about mountain climbing. Before she knew it, she was laying out her clothing on top of her bed. She went to turn on her compact cassette player, when an all too familiar rapping came from her front door.

Rather than feeling unsettled by this, Mary was aggravated to the point where her teeth were grinding. She ensured that her bathrobe was tied up securely and then preceded to answer the door. Even through the drapes and the fogged window, she could make out a single figure clothed in some type of trench coat. She remained motionless as she tried to determine the allegiance of the figure. Then another set of knocking prompted her to unlock and open the door.

Standing in the few inches of snow on her porch stood Agent Smith in solitude. In addition to his usual attire, he was equipped with an elegant, dark forest green business trench coat that had all three buttons done up, as well as a matching pair of leather gloves. He withdrew his sunglasses as the clouds had reclaimed the sky and neatly tucked them into a coat pocket. His icy blue eyes contrasted against the white surroundings, compelling her to blush despite not being sexually attracted to him. Although luckily for her, her face was still red from her hot shower, which shielded this from his knowledge. Then her eyes coasted passed him to find the black Lincoln had been parked with no sign of any lingering passengers.

"Agent Smith, what a pleasant surprise," she said quietly then coughed when the harsh wind stole her breath. "Where's Pierce and Bryce?"

"Tending to another assignment, Miss Simms." He responded quickly, ignoring the snow whipping at his hair.

"Mhmm… And what about you?" She asked, not allowing the cold to phase her erect posture despite having bare legs. "Here to try and dissect me some more, eh?"

He waited for a blast of snowflakes to pass then answered, "I am here on my own account, Miss Simms."

Mary took a moment to study him to find that he was being serious.

"Still trying to wheedle me over I see." She smirked, and then grew solemn. "If this business is over my future employment, please come in and enthrall me. If there's anything I've learned that we share in common, Agent Smith, it's our guilty pleasure of petty torments."

With what appeared to be hesitance, Agent Smith entered the household and Mary closed the door behind them. She offered him a coat hanger and he gave it back with his coat attached. While she hanged it up, she noticed his eyes trailing up the staircase that led to the unused upper level. Newspapers and paint cans lined the steps as she had primed the entire interior of the house white. Surprisingly the house wasn't burdened by the overwhelming stench of paint.

"I still haven't decided upon a color yet." She noted, walking back over to her compact cassette player. "Anyways, just let me finish getting ready, and I'll be right with you."

He nodded as she pressed the play button and gathered her clothing from the daybed. She brushed passed him and disappeared into the hallway, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

Pachelbel's Canon in D Major hymned but the blips and hisses from the tape made Smith cringe despite the pianist's perfection. Without Mary to drown out the music's hiccups, he needed to find refuge in something else. He found her backpack sitting against the dresser and reluctantly rummaged through it. To his surprise he found an ice axe, heavyweight windproof and waterproof clothing, a balaclava, hiking boots, a worn photo of her pregnant mother and supposedly her father (whose face was faded out from the picture being touched too much), and a portable cassette player with headphones all jammed into the interior of the bag. He carefully took out the electronic device, placed the headphones to his ears (although not removing his agent earpiece), and turned on the player.

A piano similar to the one playing on the other cassette player sang into his ears, but this recording sounded like an answering machine. Then two female voices chimed in, one adult and one barely out of her infancy.

"_Somewhere over the rainbow_

_Skies are blue,_

_And the dreams that you dare to dream_

_Really do come true._

_Someday I'll wish upon a star_

_And wake up where the clouds are far_

_Behind me._

_Where troubles melt like lemon drops_

_Away above the chimney tops_

_That's where you'll find me."_

Then the young girl who Smith recognized as Mary started to giggle.

"_Please leave a message at the beep, and we'll get back to you if we aren't above the clouds yet!_" The adolescent Mary recited in an almost timid voice.

Then the recording beeped and cut into another message. The odd car horn blared in the background as a matured woman now spoke into a cellular phone.

"_Hi Mary. I'm just leaving work now. It was so busy today, but I made a lot of tips! I probably won't be home for another forty minutes or so. The traffic is horrendous. You'd think we live in a zoo! Anyways, I figured I'd treat us out to dinner for a change since I'm off tonight. Call me to let me know where you'd like to go. Thanks Hun, talk to you soon. I lov-_" The sound of screeching car tires and glass shattering ended the message before the sound of dead tone filled his ears.

Smith stealthily slipped the device back into the bag before realizing that the other player had stopped. Mary had still not returned, so he decided to inspect the cassette tape to see what had been trying to serenade him. He ejected the tape to find it too was a home recording. Neat cursive labeled the tape as "Mom's Last Recital".

"Are all agents as desperately curious as kids in antique stores?" Mary, now fully dressed and groomed, silently stepped into the living room from the hallway. "Or are you just the odd one out?"

"I…" Smith put the tape back into the device and turned to face her. "I'm sorry."

She shrugged it off, "It doesn't matter. She always said she was going to play that at my wedding as I walked down the aisle. Fat chance of either ever happening. Anyways, the board is set and I've got the kettle on."

They retired to the kitchen where they commenced another game of chess and conversation.

"So I thought you were off duty?" She motioned at his plugged in earpiece. "Can't you function without Big Brother harping into your ear? Or do you need them telling you what to do, what to think, what to feel twenty-four seven?"

He raised his hand to hold onto his coiled earpiece, as if subconsciously. He remained silent while she studied him with an unblinking gaze.

"I just want you to feel comfortable in my home. But if wearing that Illuminati device makes you cope with being just another government marionette, I won't have it any other way." She captured one of his rooks. "Can you feel the puppet strings yanking at your every move, every thought, and every emotion?"

Smith's gaze lowered into his teacup, which Mary was quick to jump upon.

"In the humble words of Pompous Pierce, 'I can assure you that the answer cannot be found in a tea cup', Agent Smith." A sadistic grin had spread across her face as she seized his queen.

"I came here today, Miss Simms, to inform you of an opportunity that has arisen. But if you wish to continue to play in the sandbox, then I will leave." He arose to his feet but she leaned forward as if to grab his arm.

"Okay fine, you want to talk _real_ business? I'm all ears!" She leaned back into her chair as he reclaimed his seat. "Although I have my doubts that a rookie can offer me anything valuable."

He grudgingly grabbed his earpiece and pulled it from his auditory canal, resting it upon his shoulder blade.

"I was the individual tasked to read your philosophy articles, Miss Simms. Essentially I was the one to pull the plug on your little attempt to make others 'see the truth'. Agent Pierce may have taken the credit, but I am the one who can mend or bend your future." His voice was hardhearted as he claimed one of her bishops. "So you can either choose to collaborate with me and have purpose, or you can continue this little masquerade of yours and live out your days in this charade you call a life, wallowing in your Mother's grave."

He noted that he had her undivided attention now as he had suddenly gained the upper hand in the conversation.

"Quite frankly, Miss Simms, this world would be a much happier place if it were ridden of this terrorist organization. But as they grow in numbers, our dominance is threatened to dwindle behind in their shadow. We fight them to serve and protect citizens such as yourself from the chaos they plan to unleash, and we continue to succeed –for now. But as with any organization, we would like to try a different approach, to perhaps narrow our competitor's chances at success. We need a little assistance with this, and I believe you can help us, Miss Simms. I see a lot of potential in you." He remained impassive as he watched her capture his last knight. "You are a hunter by instinct and your ability to crack a person's mind is unmatched by anyone of your age. Your talent to naturally act your way through any situation adds an invaluable asset that most would take years of training to accomplish. I think you would make an excellent espionage agent, given the proper guidance. Now, before I can continue, do you accept my proposal?"

Mary could barely fathom how Smith was able to suddenly turn the table on her despite everything she had thrown at him previously, let alone could she begin thinking about actually surpassing universities and academies to become a legit FBI agent. This was surely a tactic that Agent Pierce would not employ, and she wondered if this is why Smith remained the rookie of the trio. She knew that something wasn't right, nor was anything adding up in her books. Then her mind wandered to the thought of Morpheus and she pondered if Smith would truly arrest her if she disobeyed him. Finally she found her voice again and took a deep breath before answering.

"Before I can accept or decline your proposal, Agent Smith, I have a condition of my own." With a nod from Smith, she continued. "Without me consenting to your offer just yet, you tell me more about this 'Matrix' that the terrorists advocate. In return, I tell you everything that I know about one of their members that goes by the alias 'Mouse'."

Smith was unresponsive as this game of quid pro quo was awfully risky for both of the contributing members.

"Either way, you win. Then we both know more about the enemy. Besides, like I said during your last visit, I don't have any attachments to anyone on this planet. I'm a drifter living in a kinship world. A vagabond consciousness trapped in a human body, a retrovirus caught in an undeserving host. A part of me is missing, or incomplete, and I pity myself as much as I pity humanity. I may just be utterly insane, but the world that lies beyond my front door is a million times more savagely pathologic. But as Aristotle put it best, 'No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.' If I can help bring justice and closure for those poor people out there, that is a reward in itself, never mind purpose."

"_Your_ perception is _your_ reality." Smith commented while he gained another black pawn. "You may pity people, Miss Simms, but you are clearly envious of them as well."

"Well, the way I see everything is that the mind is a human's greatest attribute, but it's also the greatest flaw… If I don't accept your offer, then I suppose that means you'll slip something into my water and by tomorrow, I won't have a damn clue who you or your colleagues are, and I'll just be another vegetable waiting for my due date?" She chuckled nervously and took out another white bishop.

"Something like that…" Smith offered her a slim smile as he captured her queen. "We have a deal then, Miss Simms. You may ask away, ladies first."

"Like any creed, there must be some sort of creation story behind this 'Matrix' that the terrorists worship. Like how did it come to be and exist as it does today?" She questioned, diverting her focus to the chessboard now as they were evenly matched.

Again, with reluctance, Smith contemplated how to answer such a question. Then after stealing yet another black pawn he replied, "The Matrix was supposedly created as an alternate dimension for humans to dwell in as the planet had become uninhabitable. According to the terrorists, we are currently living in this virtual reality that they call the Matrix. My turn, what is your attachment to Mouse?"

_A simulated reality? Like a video game, or a computer system?_ Mary noticed Smith waiting impatiently as it was now her turn in the hot seat.

"Him and I were best friends for about ten years. We'd known each other since preschool and after he moved away in grade six, we still messaged each other on the computer. We roleplayed." She captured another white piece and pressed forward. "So if humans live in this simulated reality, what happened to the real world?"

"It was destroyed during a world war and had become a barren land of darkness. The only way for a human to survive in this wasteland was to accept the illusionary realm of the Matrix, or face rejection." He seized another pawn. "What did you roleplay?"

_A war? World War Three? _Mary nodded her head as she contemplated her next move.

"Mainly fantasy based adventures. I usually played roles of emissary characters. One in particular was named Odessa, mainly because she was a shape shifter and often acted like the Trojan horse in the 'Odyssey' to disable and destroy her enemies. But eventually we grew out of roleplaying…" Her voice became weak as she thought about Mouse and her betrayal to her longest held best friend. "What kind of war, a nuclear holocaust between countries?"

"To a certain degree, yes. Although it wasn't man versus man, it was man versus machine, and the machines triumphed over humanity. Why did you stop, did he make you feel uncomfortable?" Smith's explanation was sharp and quick, like his ability to steal her pawns.

"Heh, as much as he tried advancing on me, he always failed. We stopped because he took an interest in programming computers –aside from his interest in his stash of pornography. Check." Mary had utilized her rooks to place the white king piece into check. "The rest of our messages were either about his accomplishments as a budding programmer –which I took no interest in- or about philosophy. A 'Machine War'? Machines as in robots? As in artificial intelligence? So we're living in the past, while the real world –present day- is in the future?"

"Yes. The terrorists claim that sometime in the twenty-first century, humans created artificial intelligence – which eventually spawned an entire race of machines. The details of the war are unknown but as they say, the machines were victorious, and thus they enslaved any humans that survived." Smith managed to avoid a checkmate, but just barely. "Was he the one to spark your interest in philosophy, Miss Simms?"

"Partially him, and partially myself. But I can understand why he was sucked into this 'Matrix' faith now. He always related the world as we know it to a computer operating system. He held the firm belief that humans are like batteries, in the sense that we were the software that fuelled the system – too much would slow and cause malfunctions, but too little would make the system insufficient to run. I guess being law enforcement, he would say that you would more be suited as a security program. Checkmate." Mary slightly marveled at her victory, and then sighed. "Unfortunately, that's the extent I can tell you about Mouse that really matters. Our messages took a sudden halt, and when I tried to find out if he was okay, I was met with unfortunate news. But we both know that however his death was covered up, he lives and breathes today."

"My last question to you, Miss Simms, is do you believe in the Matrix, do you think it is real?" His gaze was unbroken, as he had taken his second defeat rather lightly.

"Quite frankly, Agent Smith, illusions don't concern me, and I don't believe anything until I see it with my own eyes. Now, how did I beat you again?" Mary mimicked his gaze, secretly delighted that their quid pro quo session had ended.

"Your two rooks. Together they charge and become an unstoppable force. Or perhaps it was just luck that you won again." Smith answered with sincerity.

"Two identical siege towers that become firewalls. Alone they are only as useful as the player can utilize them. Combined, they are worth more than the queen and are twice as deadly." She grinned as she held both of her rooks in each hand. "Luck is an abstraction of a frail human mind, and I thoroughly believe it to be nothing more than an illusion that humanity exploits to cover up its choices. But unfortunately, as long as there are humans inhabiting this planet, there are going to be bad choices. You chose your moves, and as wisely as you thought they were, you fell into the very same trap as before. Habit."

Smith's eye contact remained strong while Mary's lowered into her empty teacup.

"Oh lovely…" She grumbled as she tilted her cup to reveal the tealeaves that resembled a single crow. "It looks like the scales won't be in my favor today."

Smith slanted his cup with a faint smirk, "They're in mine, Miss Simms."

Lying at the bottom of his cup was a flock of flying birds, prompting Mary to grunt.

"Have you made your decision yet, Miss Simms?" Smith asked, arising to his feet as she did.

She shook her head, "No… Not yet. I need to get some fresh air, clear my thoughts. Anyways, I have to return some library books, maybe a walk to and fro will help persuade my decision."

Smith's eyes averted from hers to the kitchen window. In between elongated icicles hanging from the gutters, heavy snow cascaded, making the neighboring house a white blur.

"Would you like a ride? It's very slippery outside, I wouldn't want you to-"

"-Fall and give myself a concussion?" Mary finished, slightly annoyed at the suggestion. "Fine, if you insist. Just let me gather a few things first."

He nodded, "I'll go warm up the car."

They departed ways, Smith through the front door with his coat reequipped, and Mary into the basement. Downstairs, Mary gathered some ammo and quickly loaded her revolver. Then gingerly, she stuffed it into the back of her pants and covered it up with her baggy sweatshirt. One of her library books sat in the laundry room, which covered up her true reasoning for entering the basement incase Smith questioned. Next she casually returned upstairs to pull on her trench coat and then slipped her books into her backpack. She was about to go outside when Smith met her at the front doorway, holding onto her mail. His earpiece was plugged back in now.

"Oh… Thanks." Mary simply stated, surprised that it was already that time of day. "Oh wait!"

She hurried back into the living room to retrieve a sealed envelope that was labeled "Smith" with neat cursive. He had followed her to the hallway arch, thrown vaguely off guard at the sudden movement.

Meeting Smith at the archway, she offered him the envelope, "Here. This is for you."

They exchanged letters and he looked at it questioningly, "What is 'this'?"

"A gift, silly. But only open it when you feel without a friend in the world." She replied, her cold eyes brightening momentarily.

"Thank you, Miss Simms, but I am far too busy for a social life." He refrained from fully accepting the present.

"Oh I know, but trust me. The worst feeling isn't being lonely. It's being forgotten by someone you could never forget."She smiled, gently pushing his hand towards his chest.

After a pregnant pause, he slipped the envelope into his inner coat pocket. "Are you ready to leave, Miss Simms?"

"Just another moment, please." She answered, filing through her mail to find a confidential letter. "I'll be out in a sec."

With a nod, Smith returned outside to the blizzard that awaited him.

Mary opened the envelope and unfolded the paper to have her heart sink to her boots. It was a brief note from Morpheus. Silently, she read the message over multiple times as if it were a mirage.

_When you are prepared to walk the path, send us a signal. We will contact you as soon as time permits us._

Mary lifted her gaze from the note to her fireplace, and then got an idea. She ripped the paper in half, snatched two matches from the mantel, and ignited one of the pieces. Fanning it onto the logs, the fireplace alit in dancing flames. She dashed upstairs into her Mother's old bedroom and enkindled the remaining fireplace; nearly tripping over opened paint cans in the process. Running back downstairs, she grabbed her backpack and rushed out the door. Then after locking it behind her, she walked over to meet Smith on her front pathway.

"I'm ready now. House was a bit cold." She nodded at the smoke drifting out of her chimneys. "Thanks again for the ride, you don't have to…"

"My patience is wearing thin, Miss Simms." Smith grumbled, holding open the front passenger door for her. "My colleagues want an answer. You will provide us with one before we reach the library."

Mary's head sunk into her shoulders as she carefully sat in the luxurious vehicle, flinching at the door closing behind her. Smith rejoined her in the driver's seat and calmly pulled away from Mary's domain. Mary watched as her house disappeared into a white flurry of snow and then redirected her attention to the windshield.

"Then I suppose this is one of those once-in-a-lifetime, limited time offers then? It's awfully fishy, Agent Smith. And I'm the sucker caught on the hook. Impatience never amounts to greatness. If you want to hit the jackpot, you have to wait. On multiple occasions I've waited for seventeen hours in knee-deep snow in negative temperatures, just for that single precise moment when to pull the trigger to claim my payout. Fire at the wrong moment, and that chance is forever lost." She turned to him, her eyes bold with passion. "I will give you an answer, but if you rush me, it may not be the one you want to hear. You and your colleagues will have to sit patiently, then I'll throw you a bone."

"You may not believe this Miss Simms, but we are very busy men. You are but a mere splinter in our schedule." His voice was unsympathetic as he tried to remain stone-faced. "We do not tolerate insolence, or prolonged indecisiveness."

"So you want me to be more like an agent, is it? Obey orders like a good little mutt and be rewarded with petty words of encouragement and promise of a grand prize. What makes you think that you are nobler than the sheep you try to shepherd around? 'How much more are ye better than the fowls?'" She growled, her fingernails digging through her gloves into her backpack. "At least I don't wear a noose around my neck day-by-day. And you know what, I'm starting to think that there's more to this 'Matrix' than you're telling me, Agent Smith. It may provide a sense of freedom to the terrorists, but to you, it's just another collar around your throat. You're so caught up in it, that you are a slave to it. The Matrix has you, and you are fully aware of it."

Smith's face twitched, as did his eyes behind his dark sunglasses. She noticed his grip tighten around the steering wheel, which brought a hint of satisfaction to her face.

"You know, I always thought Mouse was a 'try hard'. Always trying to sound smart with his analogies and antidotes, trying to get into my heart, let alone my pants. But you know what I realize after all these years of pitying him? He was right, and like an arrogant fool I dismissed him, like many have done to me." She looked back out the window to watch various waves of faces fly by. "With death comes rebirth, Mouse has proved this to me. When I realized that humans are like batteries to a machine… That is our society, our reality. That humans operate with a hive mind mentality while under the illusion of individuality, that 'free will' and 'choice' is the construct of our environment. And yet, not our own will, since we have no will, free will is an illusion. When I accepted these realities, I did die inside, Agent Smith. I fell into a state of depression, trying to find proof that this was wrong, and when I came out of this state, I became self-aware, operating in the hive mind while being aware of it. That's why philosophy is of no use to me anymore. Because while I know the truth, ninety-nine percent of the population thinks I'm crazy. The question that I have yet to answer is whether or not I think they deserve to know the truth."

Her gaze remained on the blank faces that passed her unblinking line of sight and continued, "Look at them Smith. If they were told the truth, would they actually believe it? Probably not. But there's the one percent of the population that would, and I know who this minority is. They exploit the very thing that you and your colleagues try so desperately to protect. So you hunt them, like the animals you brand them, but not because you believe they are pests, because you are told to, and you obey. Why do you obey? Because you are a creature of habit, and only a cunning predator can think like its prey. That's where I come in. Now do I swoop in and help the FBI, or do I help the delinquents? Or do I keep to myself and watch as chaos unfolds? Or do you, Agent Smith, trust me to help you?"

Smith ignored her question as they had reached the library in Pilsen. Mary cocked an eyebrow.

"How did you know which library to go to? I didn't tell you…" Her voice faded, as they were nearly face-to-face now.

"This is the end of the line, Miss Simms. What is your decision?" Smith's voice was as firm as his frown. "You believe you know the truth. Now face it, if you can."

Mary opened the passenger door and stepped out into the snowy street, snatching her backpack. She tilted her head so she could see his face, "Why should I? You've already shown it to me."

Then she slammed the door shut and scurried into the library. The familiar face of the aging librarian brightened at the sight of her.

"Mary! I'm surprised to see you out and about on such a horrible day. Good to see you! I hope those programming books brought you some enlightenment?" Mrs. Turner exclaimed cheerfully.

With her head semi-buried into her backpack, Mary replied, "Oh they did."

She found the books, but her face contorted as something was missing. _The bus ticket_. Her key out of this mess that seemed to follow her very shadow, she had forgotten back at home inside her drawer.

"Is something wrong Mary?" Mrs. Turner inquired after accepting the return books.

"I… Forgot something at home." Mary paused as she looked out the window to see Smith eyeing her like a hawk, chattering furiously into his earpiece. "I won't be taking out any books either, I'm going away for awhile. Not sure when I'll be back."

"A vacation? Oh how wonderful. I hope you have a safe trip! Where are you going?" Mrs. Turner asked, anticipation making her nearly jump out of her seat.

"Above the clouds, to the top of the highest mountain down the road." Mary apathetically replied. "I need to get out of this city, this place is so draining…"

After noticing Mary's displeasure, Mrs. Turner handed her an enclosed paper cup of tea. "Here, I was going to have this, but you need it more. Tea always helps me clear my head when something's disconcerting me. And please, please be careful. I want to see you before I retire next year!"

Mary took the hot beverage and smiled briefly, although it was still clearly evident that something troubled her.

"Thank you, Mrs. Turner. If I'm not back in time, I hope you have a nice retirement party." Mary tried to be as warming as she could, despite her mind drifting to the thought of Smith outside. "If I'm lucky, I won't freeze to death and only suffer moderate hypothermia."

The woman opened her mouth to respond, when the ringing of the business phone interrupted her. Mary nodded and turned her attention to the surrounding aisles, the place was completely deserted aside from her and the librarian.

"Y-y-yes, hold on please… Mary?" The librarian called, her hand covering the receiver.

Mary slowly turned her gaze back to the woman, completely silent as she mindfully cursed herself for forgetting her bus ticket.

Mrs. Turner held out the phone towards the confused young woman and whispered, "It's for you."

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is my first fanfiction story that I have ever written... _Constructive reviews_would be highly appreciated!


	6. Chapter 6

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **This chapter immediately follows chapter 5, and forces Mary into a roller coaster of none-stop action.

**Fun Fact:** While I can say that I envision Emma Stone as Mary/ Agent Rooke, I honestly haven't matched any actor with Agent Pierce nor Agent Bryce. They are meant to be generic Agents, so I don't think it is overly important since they don't play a huge role in the story. But while I chose their names for their meanings, I recently re-watched one of my favorite movies "American Psycho" and discovered that maybe I subconsciously chose them. The name of the fictional Wall Street investment firm that the main characters work at is called 'Pierce & Pierce'. One of the main character's colleagues names is 'Timothy Bryce', and like the others, he is just as full of himself as the next.

* * *

The butterflies had hatched from their chrysalises within the depths of Mary's stomach as she retrieved the phone from the librarian. With cautious hands, she placed the receiver to her ear.

"Hello?" Mary said simply, attempting to appear casual in front of the increasingly confused librarian.

The phone spoke back to her, in a faint voice that only she could hear and recognize.

"_We received your signal, Mary. We know that you have temporarily evaded their custody, but if you go back out that front door, you will meet a horrible fate. You know too much, Mary, too much that even a pill may not wipe your memory entirely clean. They are going to kill you, and I will not allow that to happen._" Morpheus' voice was sincere yet strict.

"What c-can I do?" Mary replied with her voice slightly weaving in and out of panic. "W-where can I go?"

"_Exit out the back door of the library and move through the alleyways towards the nearest subway station. Keep a low profile and do not be seen by anyone. Is that clear?_" With a silent nod from Mary, he continued. "_Mouse will be waiting for you there. Now, as soon as you're ready, go. There is no turning back from here. Good luck, I will see you shortly_."

The phone cut out which prompted her to return the receiver to the librarian.

"Mary, I may not be your blood, but you tell me this instant what's wrong! Ever since your last visit you haven't been yourself. I look at you and you look back with these hollow gray eyes… Like you've seen Death himself!" Mrs. Turner had arisen from her desk and appeared as if she was about to pounce on Mary. "It's okay, you can tell me."

She opened her arms and Mary homed in to complete the hug.

"Do you ever feel like… even your own shadow is against you? No matter what you do, no matter where you go, and even in your own home, you're a prisoner. Just living out your life, living a lie, and knowing that you're living in a lie. A pareidolia within an imaginary world." Mary removed her chin from the librarian's shoulder and met her face-to-face, refusing to release the woman from her tight grip. "Have you ever seen an aerial view of this city? Do you know what it looks like?"

"Sweetie, how much Halloween candy was left over this year?" The bewildered woman inquired.

Completely ignoring the question she pressed forwards, "It looks pretty similar to a printed circuit board. Quite peculiar really, and yet not at all, a vague reminder of being just another component laminated into a recycled pathway."

"Honey, did you slip on some black ice on your way here and give your noodle a bump? You're losing your grip, Mary..." She brushed back Mary's long hair to examine her normal forehead, then felt it with her palm. "Have you caught the flu bug that's been going around? You didn't overdose on the pharmaceuticals again, did you?"

"It's more powerful than God. It's more evil than the Devil. The poor have it. The rich need it. If you eat it you will die. What am I?" Met with silence and an increasingly upset façade from the librarian, Mary answered her own riddle in a frazzled tone. "Nothing. I am nothing, and I am no one. You can touch my flesh, we can exchange words, but I am simply not there. None of us are. We are not real, because we are nothing!"

Mary broke free from the librarian's grasp, reclaimed her now opened tea, and burst out of the back door of the library. Outside, the snow still fell heavily like a waterfall and maintained minimal visibility like mist. Mary's heart was hammering against her ribcage and her breath materialized against the icy air. She quickly grabbed a clean handful of snow and ate it, and then another. She exhaled a few more times to find her breath concealed. No visible breath meant she could travel like a shadow and remain undetected in any territory.

From behind the cover a garbage dumpster, she poked her head around at the street that laid about ten feet away. Even with the winter storm that was passing through many people still commuted as normal, although traffic jams were plentiful and horrendous. She was about to proceed forwards to find camouflage within a crowd of people, when two giant hands grabbed her shoulders and seized her back into a headlock.

Struggling to find balance, she tried flailing her arms and legs, but with her eyes forced to examine the ground, she recognized the attire her captor was wearing. Either Smith had taken off his winter coat, or Pierce or Bryce had her pinned, and her thrashing subsided.

"Where are you going, Miss Simms?" Finally came the voice of Pierce breathing into her ear, his grasp around her neck only allowing her enough oxygen to survive and nothing more. "Do not try screaming."

"I won't." Mary gasped for air, and managed to cough out, "Nor should you!"

Before Pierce could respond, with her free arm, Mary tossed her steaming tea over her shoulder directly onto Pierce's face. This immediately granted her an advantage as his grip loosened and she tripped him from behind. Breaking free from the headlock, she quickly pulled out her hand sanitizer bottle and squirted out its alcoholic remnants into his eyes as his sunglasses had been torn from his face during the escape maneuver. He blindly attempted to stand up but she had already darted away into the street before his view could fathom again.

Mary took advantage of her clothing and seamlessly blended in with the black wave of business coats, tying her hair up in the process since very few businesswomen wore their hair down. The commuters of the business district were far too posh to wear wintery hats, so everyone's head was covered in a thin layer of white snowflakes as with her own. Moving only when traffic lights permitted her, she followed the crowd towards the subway station in the wintery conditions that border lined dangerously close to a hazardous whiteout.

She had successfully gained a few city blocks when a flash of dark green caught her peripheral vision. She inched her head to face the direction from whence it came, and she saw Agent Pierce, his green suit contrasting against the black and white surrounding him. His sunglasses were back on his face and his clothing was dry and free from tea stains. He just stood there, still as a statue, with his fists clenched at his sides and his face disturbingly unfazed by the bitter weather. He appeared to be reserving himself, as perhaps he didn't want to raise amok within these otherwise orderly people. He was staring directly at her, watching her flow with the crowd as if he could see clearly through the others.

Mary pulled her attention back to the pathway ahead to follow the others along the crosswalk without causing a disturbance to the uniformed mass, her mind racing over the thought of Pierce changing his clothing in such a short period of time. It was simply impossible; no ordinary person could achieve that, even if they were carrying around a second pair of identical clothing. Then another flash of dark green drew her attention across the road to where she needed to go. It was Agent Bryce, whom was standing in the exact same manner as Pierce, eyeing her like a famished predator. With her eyes focused on him, she unknowingly stepped out of line into oncoming traffic and caused a public transit bus to screech to a halt just a mere foot away from her torso. She banged on the retractable door and hopped in when the Driver opened it.

Over the Driver's infuriated jabbering, she screamed, "I'm sorry! You have to help me get out of here."

Then tears brimmed and she sobbed, "Please… Some weirdoes are chasing me!"

The Driver groaned but allowed her on as insistent honking reminded him that he was holding up traffic. She sat near the back exit, ignoring dirty looks from the other passengers, and watched Pierce and Bryce regroup to see her off. Most people would have given them the vulgar response of the middle finger, but instead a small grin spread against one of her frostbitten cheeks. Her waterworks ceased as she watched the bus gain a few more blocks in her favor and the two Agents disappear into the white fog. But her victory was short-lived as the bus came to a sudden stop in a sea of traffic surrounding a construction site. The doors flew open as people demanded to get off, and she followed suit.

Back on the sidewalk, she power walked another block with her senses on high alert as she had yet to see another Agent pop out of nowhere. She was making decent progress until she was stopped by another red light. Both her heart and jaw dropped when the sight of a black Lincoln Continental coasted into view. It pulled up in front of her at the curb, and she felt the sweat beads on her forehead crystallizing in the frozen air. Then the back passenger side suicide door opened, revealing Mouse beckoning her to jump in, which she unmindfully obeyed.

She slammed the door shut behind her as they glided away from the curb to rejoin traffic, her eyes drawn to the back of the seat in front of her. The back of a black bald man's head greeted her and she wondered if the silent man who occupied it even acknowledged her entering the vehicle. A black woman she didn't recognize was the driver, and Mouse sat beside her, biting his tongue while he had a pistol drawn to her head. Mary barely opened her mouth when her words were stolen from her vocal chords.

"I don't know what you planned on accomplishing by not taking my advice, but your defiance has cost us precious time. Time is always against us Mary, and you will do as I say from this point forward if you wish to escape this reality." Mary instantly matched this voice with Morpheus'.

"I'm sorry, Morpheus. But they had ambushed me behind the library; I couldn't risk sticking to the alley. It'd be too easy for them to stay on my tail." She stared down the pistol's barrel into Mouse's eyes. "Always the persistent type, aren't ya Mouse? Is this really necessary? You think you can get your way just because you point a gun at somebody's head?"

"It's for our protection." Replied the calm female driver.

Mary huffed, glaring over the driver's shoulder to find they were nearing Baldwin Heights, "Because I alone could take down a car full of people? Thanks for the words of encouragement, Mrs.-?"

"Niobe." The driver noted.

Mary sighed and returned her gaze back to Mouse, who clearly did not want to be pointing a gun to her temple.

"Mouse… I have to apologize for my rude behavior before. I realize that I was the one being a fool, and that as much as it pains me to say this… Tha-that you were right. You were right all along. And like an idiot, I just labeled you as being mental." Mary's eyes filled with tears again although she undoubtedly tried to hold them back. "I'm the one who's mental. This place, this city it's… it's corrupted me. I'm so sorry…"

Mouse lowered the pistol to his lap, but still had it ready to fire if necessary. His glum face brightened with a small smile as he finally spoke up, "I know, and it's okay. We're here to help you. I'm here to save you, to help you get away. So you can get away from all of this, so you can be freed fro-"

Mary forced her lips upon his to cut him off and he closed his eyes and returned the favor. After a few moments of harmonious silence, they opened their eyes with Mouse's face torn between crimson red and complete mystification.

Mary wiped away her tears and grinned, "You've already done so much for me Mouse, and I can't thank you enough. But you are just an old flame that's been long extinguished… I'm afraid there is no hope for me, because I have nothing left. Not even memories or distinguishable feelings exist now, like I'm just carrying on for the sake of being. That's why I have to get out of here, leave this city, and live out my days in the mountains. And hopefully I can die peacefully atop its peak, with my head above the clouds and far from this hellhole."

Mouse remained in weary silence as Morpheus shifted in his seat, turning around to face Mary. He was a middle-aged man wearing what seemed to be an alligator skin leather trench coat and mirror frameless, armless sunglasses.

"Please listen to me Mary when I say that you are in serious danger. I am not joking when I say to you that the safest place left for you in this world is now within our presence –not even a mountaintop can provide sanctuary to you. No matter where you go, they will hunt you, and they will kill you once they find you. Whatever purpose you think you serve, however loyal you think you've been to them will not be met with reward. They cannot afford to keep you alive, and alone you would surely be killed. They are highly efficient at what they do, and your only chance at survival is to stay with us. So please, only leave our side if you are absolutely forced to or we demand it. Do I have your word?" Morpheus asked, noting her growing discomfort as his warning seemed to have stirred something within her.

Mary raised her hand and they shook on it. She nodded and replied, "Understood. Might I add, it's a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Morpheus."

Morpheus smiled but it faded as quickly as it came as he abruptly shielded himself behind his seat. Mouse pushed Mary down into the backseat as a vehicle slammed into their bumper and the back window shattered into thousands of glass shards. Mary screamed as glass scattered over her and throughout the interior of the vehicle. Another crash into the back alerted them that their trunk had caved in, and Niobe swerved across two lanes into oncoming traffic.

"Shit!" Niobe shouted over screeching tires as she just barely avoided a head on collision with a sedan. "Morpheus! What now?"

"Focus, Niobe." He remained inhumanly calm as he proceeded to arm himself with an Uzi submachine gun. "We will get Mary out of here, we just have to focus and evade as many setbacks as we can. Mary, please remain ducking."

Mary silently nodded with her face shielded by her gloved hands, while the rest of her body trembled in a fetal position. Morpheus fired his Uzi back at the vehicle through the nonexistent back window, bullet casings piling on top of Mary's jacket, until he had released an entire magazine. Mouse covered fire with his pistol so Morpheus could reload, but he used his bullets sparingly.

Mary's eyes shot open as she heard a familiar handgun firing, the bullets zipping across the top of her head to plant themselves into the back of the front seats. Her keen ear for specific guns told her that whomever was attacking them was using a Desert Eagle handgun, and she knew of three people who carried that type of firepower.

"Those sneaky bastards…" Mary snarled, while Mouse looked at her confusedly as he reloaded his pistol. "They waited 'til they had all their eggs in one basket. That's why they didn't attack me earlier!"

Mary poked her head up as she recognized their pursuer had used up his seven rounds and would have to reload again. Behind them through whipping snow was an empty, bullet torn bus that was branded "Out of Service". Sitting in the driver's seat was Agent Bryce, completely unharmed.

"Hold on!" Cried Niobe as the car lurched on two wheels as she rounded a corner, a snowplow truck driven by Agent Pierce grazing the right side of their vehicle as it thundered passed to nearly disable the bus.

Suddenly a mixture of police car and fire truck sirens blared over top of the gun shots, while red and blue flashing lights alerted them that the Fuzz had now joined the pursuit.

Niobe swerved through six lanes of traffic as she attempted to throw off the convoy of law enforcement that trailed behind them. Bryce smashed his bus into their trunk, erasing it completely from existence as the car was now concaved on two sides. The car veered again and skidded across onto the sidewalk, people fleeing onto the street as Niobe slammed on the horn. As they neared the end of the street, the white snow cloud cleared and a police blockade awaited them.

"The parking garage!" Morpheus pointed. "To your right!"

The car took a sudden one-eighty turn and plowed through a tollgate to enter the full parking garage. Mary looked back to watch as Bryce crashed into a concrete pillar, the top half of his bus shredded off as it surpassed the ceiling clearance. Some police cars managed to file through while others piled up to block the entrance. Niobe sped towards the exit, only to be met by another fire truck blocking her escape route, this one controlled by Agent Smith. Instead, she swirled the car around again to fire up to the next level of the building. There were fewer cars and at the opposite end there was a narrow opening in the crumbling wall marked off by caution tape. Sitting in front of it was a pile of construction equipment and signs that she could use as a makeshift ramp.

"Everybody strap in!" Niobe announced as they neared the construction area.

Mouse smirked and continued, "Please secure all belongings and prepare for take off!"

Mary looked around for a seat belt to find none, as seat belts weren't regulated in original classic cars. Instead, she huddled into a ball on the debris-covered floor, bracing herself for the worst as she latched her hands onto the back of Morpheus' bullet encased seat.

The car rumbled beneath as it crossed over the wooden signs and through the crumbled opening. Then there was a sense of nothingness as the car flew serenely through the sky, forcing the other passengers to reposition themselves so they weren't sprawled against the roof of the vehicle. The void was then filled with a clash of metal smacking against asphalt as they had successfully cleared the jump and landed two stories below back on their original route. But now the vehicle was scarcely drivable, and they were quickly reminded that they were still being pursued as Agent Smith rear-ended them with his fire truck.

"Mary, use your revolver and unload a cylinder into him!" Morpheus ordered, struggling to replenish his ammo into his Uzi.

Mary looked at him with pure perplexity, even though she had subconsciously retrieved her revolver from its resting spot.

"You're asking me to shoot at another human being? What is wrong with you, harming people like it was a sport?" Mary glared at Morpheus, her revolver still at her side. "You've already caused enough damage, why cause more?"

"Do you wish to die in a metal coffin like your Mother? Or do you want to live?" Morpheus' glasses mirrored Mary's face, forcing her to glare at her own reflection.

Her eyes were mere slits as frustration made her face quiver and twist. Then she turned back as she watched the fire truck prepare to home in for another hit that targeted the car's corner. Such a battering move would have surely caused them to lose what little control they had, so Mary grudgingly pulled the gun's trigger a few times. The bullets whizzed through the air and into the front driver's side tire as she was positioned at such an angle that allowed her to target the wheel. The tire burst and Smith's focus was now diverted to maintaining control of his truck rather than shooting at his original targets.

Mary put her gun back in its holding place as she watched the truck swivel and ricochet off of parked vehicles on one side of the street and passing cars in the opposite lane of traffic. A few police cars managed to safely squeeze passed the maimed truck and preceded to attempt to box the Lincoln in. One of the cars smashed against Mary's side of the car, indenting it inwards and shattering the glass.

Mary buried herself against the floor again as more gunfire came from all angles. Squealing rubber and metal clashing with metal signified that at least two of the cops were now disabled from the chase. Violent shuddering shook the entire vehicle like an earthquake as one of the policemen had shot out their back tires.

Mouse pulled Mary back up to the seat as the shooting had ceased. She just caught the fading glimpse of the fire truck pinned between two rolled over cop cars and multiple civilian vehicles. Now only one police car trailed behind them, but the growing sound of deafening sirens meant that more police were incoming as they neared a massive park in the downtown core. This neighborhood was appropriately known as Center Park. Despite the snowy conditions, the park had seen better days as it was financially and slovenly neglected due to funding pouring into the surrounding posh apartments, museums, and restaurants instead.

"So I suppose surrendering is out of the question?" Mary joked as they thundered over potholes and bumps in the road, stirring slush in their wake.

No response came as they pummeled through the front gates of the park onto an icy yet bumpy pathway that led to a small lake in the middle of park.

"We've lost our brakes!" Niobe screamed, stomping at the brake pedal.

"On my mark, bail out." Morpheus commanded, almost unfazed by the frozen lake that was rapidly approaching their fender.

"Come again?" Mary was completely baffled at this point; she knew the car was on its last limb, but this was beyond absurd.

"Now!" Morpheus yelled over the metallic scrapes of unkempt terrain below.

At that point, all of them flung open their doors and flew out. Except Mary's door had been jammed shut from the cop car hitting it previously. She tried forcing it open using her hands, and then thrust her body weight at it as the free roaming vehicle plummeted towards the frozen water. It was a pointless effort and panic flustered her face while she tried stuffing herself out of the broken window. She was about halfway through when the hood of the car plunged through the ice into the murky green waters of the lake.

"Damn it!" She cried aloud as she managed to pull herself entirely through, but slicing her hands and legs open in the process on stubborn glass.

Blood streamed into the dark water as Mary forced her head above the freezing liquid that cleaved at her gashes and flesh alike. She wheezed and gagged as she struggled against the current that sucked her back as the car sank into its watery grave. Her muscles cramped and her arms became flimsy as gelatin as the undercurrent dragged her beneath the surface, forcing pins into her lungs and needles across her body. She felt weightless, and she watched her revolver and backpack sink into the darkness below while her hair and clothing floated lifelessly towards the light above.

Her throat pulsated and her eyes glazed over, life was slipping from her very grasp, as time itself seemed to freeze to a diluted end.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is my first fanfiction story that I have ever written... _Constructive reviews_would be highly appreciated!


	7. Chapter 7

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **This chapter immediately follows chapter 6, and concludes the tale of Mary Simms' pre-'awakened' life.

**Fun Fact:** An article that further inspired me to address the issues revolving around Morpheus and the tactics employed by the Resistance was a article entitled: "6 Great Action Heroes (Who Should Be Convicted of Murder)" [link].

* * *

Mary was slowly falling into a fatigued state as her body had been enveloped into a sluggish standstill and her eyes drooped with drowsiness. The light that twinkled above her watery tomb was gradually fading and a montage of her life failed to greet her vision. Instead she helplessly watched as her ungloved hands turned purple and the skin beneath her fingernails became a dark blue. She closed her eyes, as she couldn't bear the sight of the increasing darkness any longer, and waited for Death to sweep her away from this nightmare.

A bony white hand came lunging after her as she nearly drifted into a suffocating hush amidst the slumbering fish. She was pulled out of the icy lake and laid against a hill, her wet trench coat torn off her violently trembling body while crimson colored the white snow that supported her. Her face matched the color of her hands, while her lips were dangerously nearing indigo. Although she appeared alert, her movements had become slow and labored, and mild confusion seized her mind.

"Mary! MARY!" Mouse, her savior, screamed as he took off his jacket and wrapped it around her. He then gathered her up into a tight embrace to share his body warmth, "I promise this will all be over soon, but we have to go. They're coming!"

Sirens screamed over her coughing and flashing lights fluttered against Mary's violet face, but neither seemed to bother her the slightest as her eyes trailed in circles around her feet.

Police vehicles encircled them and officers had their firearms drawn as they knelt behind their car doors and hoods. No fire trucks, snowplows, nor buses were in sight. Although through the windshield of the closest police cruiser, Niobe spotted Agent Smith and she cursed silently. He remained inside the vehicle, fidgeting with something but none of them could see exactly what.

"Freeze! Put your hands up in the air. Kneel down. Slowly!" A burly Chief demanded, his face reddened with a mixture of anger and frostbite. "Do it! Do it now, or we will use force!"

Niobe looked back to find that the Agent had disappeared and was replaced by another cop. Mouse turned to Morpheus, who gave a faint nod.

Mouse leaned into Mary's ear and whispered, "Please forgive me."

Then he grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and dug a pistol into her panting cheek. She stumbled to remain standing as her frozen muscles struggled against the icy intoxication. Dizziness flooded her gaze as she now found refuge in the dreary gray sky.

"Nobody move, or I paint your cars red!" Mouse snapped as Mary's eyes paled closer to a bone white. "I'll do it! Look at her; she's a damn vegetable. I'd be doing her a favor!"

Mouse forced his way closer to one of the police cars, prompting the other policemen to focus on him. One cop stepped forward with a shotgun aimed at Mouse's chest.

"Release your hostage! She needs immediate medical attention!" Then Mouse used Mary as a human shield. "Do it! Let her go!"

"Very well," Mouse smirked as Niobe and Morpheus opened fire on the distracted officers, lightly tossing Mary onto a snow bank as he joined in the gunfight.

In a matter of blurred moments, the trio had perforated through every single cop that stood against them. Then they headed to one of the police vehicles, Morpheus assisting Mary into the back while Mouse scavenged for new weaponry. Morpheus tore a police jacket apart and wrapped it around her wounds. Then he took as many dry coats and fabrics that he could find and buried her amongst them. They piled into the car and fled off through the park. Back on the streets, civilian cars and walking pedestrians alike moved aside as they roared at high speed with lights and sirens blasting.

Despite regaining minimal body warmth, Mary still appeared disoriented. Mouse found a half full cup of coffee that one of the cops had left behind and gently force-fed it to her.

"We're going to get you to sanctuary Mary. Just please hang in there!" Mouse smiled when he saw a glimmer of life return to her eyes. "I won't let you go out this way… You deserve freedom."

"W-w-wher-w-where are w-e-we go-going?" Mary managed to slur her speech together to make a semi-audible sentence, her mouth burning from the beverage as well as an awful taste. "That c-c-coff-coffee tas-tastes b-burnt or s-something."

"The site of your liberation." Morpheus noted, dabbing sweat from his forehead as the heater was cranked up in an effort to revitalize Mary.

Normal color was rapidly returning to Mary's flesh as she had only suffered mild hypothermia, but due to the prolonged exposure she wouldn't last very long if she was forced to her feet again. Her mind raced over the thought of the mysterious Agents, then to the image of the cops being shot to death at the hands of her supposed rescuers.

"W-why did you kill them? The p-police I-I mean. You could've ren-rendered them unconscious," she took a moment to gather her breath, "but you took their lives instead? How r-righteous is that?"

There was a moment of silence in the car, while Niobe guided their cruiser through a slick alleyway to eliminate a few extra blocks.

Morpheus sighed and turned to face Mary. He took off his sunglasses and looked deeply into her eyes, "Sacrifices are necessary in order for the greater good to prevail. You will learn this in time."

"At what cost? H-how much is a li-life worth to you? You waste human life and yet are g-guilt free? How m-many people have you k-kil-killed for your brigade?" At this point, the liveliness had nearly been fully restored to her voice. "I am not worth another's life!"

Mary tore off the coats she had been buried under, her anger fuelling her organs to fill her with a boost of warmth. Mouse attempted to replace the clothing back over her, but she slapped away his offering.

"Mary you need to stay warm! You're no good to us dead!" Mouse forced a coat over her lap as a blanket.

She grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forwards so they were face-to-face. She glared through his innocent gaze and snarled, "I'm already dead. We all are!"

She pushed him away as their vehicle rejoined the streets, sirens growing jarringly closer. She shook her head as she watched as civilian faces and cars alike flew passed her window as they entered the middle class area of downtown.

"Damn it! Blockade ahead!" Niobe alerted them as gunfire pierced through both the windshield and silence. "Everyone out!"

Mouse grabbed a hold of Mary and they all bailed out of the moving vehicle, rolling against the asphalt as the runaway police cruiser crashed through the middle of the blockade. Tires screeched and glass and metal alike smashed as a ten-vehicle pileup formed directly behind them on the road, narrowly missing their prone bodies.

"Are you alright?" Mouse asked, helping Mary to her feet. Met with a nod, he stuffed and hid a pistol into the back of her pants, "I know you'll refuse to use it, but it's there in case you need it."

Niobe unloaded a round of bullets into the police blockade, severing it useless as nearby citizens fled for their lives as the chaos unfolded. Morpheus spoke briefly to someone on his cell phone while the gunfire drowned out his conversation. Then a snowplow driven by Agent Pierce burst its way through the vehicle pileup to pursue them. Another snowplow driven by Agent Bryce came at them from the right, while Agent Smith came from the left in another.

"Mouse! Take Mary and run." Morpheus ordered. "We'll regroup in a bit. Flare is on her way!"

Mouse nodded and tugged at Mary's arm, "Come on!"

They dashed into a narrow alleyway, leaving Niobe and Morpheus to fend for themselves against the trio of Agents. Mary felt like a little kid being dragged through a mall, as her weakened legs couldn't keep up with Mouse. As they traveled further and further away, the sounds of gunfire ceased and instead were replaced by multiple explosions. Mary attempted to slow but Mouse pulled her back into a full sprint.

"They'll be fine, Niobe and Morpheus are veterans. We gotta keep moving!" Mouse assured her.

"It's not them I'm worried about." Mary clarified.

"Mary, those Agents will kill you at any opportunity they get! Don't be so apprehensive." He growled as they skid across a patch of ice and hit a dead end. Then he spotted a fire escape ladder and pushed her up it, "Go on, quickly!"

She managed to stumble to the top, her arms nearly giving out at least twice, and she rolled over onto the gravel-covered rooftop. She crawled forwards but Mouse scooped her up to her feet.

"Keep going!" He demanded, aiding her across some minor jumps between buildings.

They kept a decent pace until Mary slipped on some black ice. She fell face first into the snow and slid to a stop just before the edge of the roof. She peered over to view the deserted sidewalk below, the treetops barely clearing the halfway mark of the tall buildings. Then her body ceased to budge as she heard a woman cry behind her. She looked back and Mouse had disappeared, replaced by a cowering woman with mascara streaming down her face. Then the sound of people shrieking forced her to look back down at the sidewalk. A crowd of people encircled her position below, and she watched as an apparition of a teenage boy drifted through her body and jumped off of the edge towards his doom.

"MARY!" Mouse called to her, shaking her shoulder as he snapped his cell phone shut.

Mary blinked a few times to find the sidewalk empty again and that the sobbing woman had vanished.

"What's wrong?" Mouse asked, brushing the snow off of her head.

"…Have you ever had moments of your life flash before you at complete random? Like how your life is supposed to flash right before your eyes just before you die, but…" She ignored his outstretched hand and pushed herself off of the ground to stand. "I think I cheated Death back in that lake."

"Don't be ridiculous, the Mary I know is never superstitious! Now come on, Flare's waiting for us at the gas station up ahead."

They engaged in another sprint and made their way across a few more rooftops. Bullets whizzed passed Mary's shoulders and burst into a brick chimney, spitting shrapnel in their path. She grabbed the chimney to stop herself from running and turned back as Mouse slid into her. Through a clearance in the storm, across the street standing on a restaurant roof was Agent Smith with his Desert Eagle drawn and pointing in their direction.

Mouse pulled out his pistol and yelled, "Down the fire escape! NOW!"

Before Mary could utter even a single word, Mouse pushed her down the nearest ladder out of firing range. As she hurried down the rungs, she heard Mouse's pistol fire relentlessly. Then before he could reload he joined her on the ladder.

"Keep moving!" Mouse had easily caught up with her.

Mary continued to struggle down each individual rung as her body cramped and muscles throbbed. Her breath grew short and the harsh winds snatched away what remaining air she could inhale. Choking on the whipping snow, she fell about ten rungs before her legs wrapped around the rails. As she regained her breath, bullets rained down the fire escape, narrowly missing her head. Another one burrowed into her shoulder blade and she cried out in agonizing pain. She timidly looked up to find Mouse counter firing at Smith whom had somehow made his way to this rooftop.

"H-how did he-?" Mary commented faintly, but yelped when a hand pulled at one of her ankles.

She fell the last few rungs to the ground to be caught by Niobe, who quickly dropped her onto her feet. With a simple nod, Niobe fired up at the Agent to cover Mouse as he slowly made progress towards the ground. Mary couldn't watch, as she feared more unnecessary bloodshed. With her eyes directed at the ground, Mouse rejoined her side and led her towards their destination.

Boiling with rage, Mary grabbed Mouse's arm and dug her nails into his flesh. "Enough! You realize how much damage you've done? How much shit we're in? Look at me! I haven't passed out yet, but I will soon if I keep losing blood! This… This is crazy!" She exclaimed through grinding teeth as she ignored Niobe's attempt to keep them moving. "And you don't even care! What are you _really_ fighting for here? What are we truly up against? You pick off all those cops like nothing, but you cower away from some guys in suits?"

They responded with silence as their eyes watched Smith on the building behind them. Mary followed their gazes to catch the Agent jump off of the rooftop and land eleven stories down on the ground, completely unharmed. He proceeded towards them without as much as a single stagger to his step.

"…No way! That's not humanly pos-" Mary was utterly winded when she was scooped up in Morpheus' arms. "H-how was he-? _What_ is he?"

"I can explain all of that soon. But for now we need to remain in focus." Morpheus finally answered as he sprinted alongside his peers into traffic.

Mary's body seized up tensely and she hesitantly asked, "Focused on what?"

"On staying alive," he simply responded as he darted in between a sedan and a postal truck. Then he noticed her sour face and asked, "Are your lungs alright, can you taste blood?"

"No… I just have a wicked aftertaste from that coffee. It's ungodly awful." She shivered in discomfort than shrieked, "Watch out!" A taxi controlled by Agent Bryce raced towards them from Morpheus' peripheral view.

Morpheus turned to notice the oncoming vehicle and remained wholly tranquil as Mary folded herself into a mangled ball. As the taxi's bumper came within a foot of ramming into them, Morpheus sprung up into the air and landed on the metal rooftop. Then he climbed down the car's trunk as if he were merely descending a staircase, rejoining the asphalt below to continue his sprint.

Unmistakably mesmerized, Mary's eyes drifted between Morpheus' determined face to Niobe and Mouse, whom were just as easily avoiding one fatality after another by gracefully dancing their way through traffic as if they were ballerinas or even ninjas.

Then she slowly pulled her eyes away from them, looked back up at Morpheus, and inquired with petrifaction, "_What_ are you?"

"Hold that thought," he said modestly as a gasoline tanker truck steadily approached from their right.

He recognized that an ordinary person was operating the massive vehicle, and that the alarmed driver was blaring on his horn for Morpheus to stop in his tracks.

Mary squeezed her eyes shut as another teenage apparition crept ahead of them into the truck's path. The vehicle slammed on its brakes but it was too late for the unfortunate ghastly girl as the vehicle's grill was already within inches of her presence. Then Mary's eyes shot open as she realized Morpheus had casually slid under the tank trailer like a limbo stick rather than stop to wait and run around it. Agent Smith was still in a hot pursuit on their tail, thus no moments could be spent standing around.

Momentarily afterwards, the group reformed in front of the gas station where Flare awaited them in another Lincoln Continental.

"How is she?" Flare asked as everyone piled into the car, her fingers lathering along the steering wheel.

Mary could hardly begin to fathom two probable possibilities as to whether she was in a sedated state, or conscious. _Was she truly watching her life flash in intervals before her because she was about to die, or had she been duped and a substance had been slipped into the coffee Mouse had forced her to drink? Was this really happening, or was this all just a nightmare gone mad?_

Morpheus sat Mary upwards on the seat beside him and replied, "She's hanging in there, somehow. Most would've given up by now. But yet… she presses on, like her mind is refusing to let go."

"Is it too late?" Mouse piped in.

Morpheus sighed and whispered, "I'm afraid she may be bound to this hopeless shell. We may be…"

Mary's vision had blurred as the conversation commenced and when she tried blinking away the haze, she met a gruesome sight. The terrorists had vanished, their voices had trailed off, and the car was caved in on the driver's side. A fresh coating of blood had been tossed against the remnants of the front distorted interior as well as the curled windshield. She carefully grabbed a hold of the passenger seat's headrest and pulled herself forward. A gag instantly erupted within her throat as she tried desperately to pry her eyes away from the abstract sculpture of internal organs and bone that was her mother's corpse. Morpheus' face formed from vapor that leaked from the fractured dashboard and spoke to her.

"Hold strong, we will get out of here. Trust me." Its voice was grisly and amplified, jolting her back into reality to find the man himself trying to snap her out of a delusional state.

She threw an uppercut that directly planted into his lower jaw, forcing the entire crew into frenzy. She crawled over Morpheus' lap as he recovered from the sudden stun and burst out the side door, collapsing on the pavement below. Mouse swiftly filed out of the car and pounced onto her back before she could fully gather to her feet.

"What the hell has gotten into you?" Mouse snapped, motioning for Flare to carry on without them. "We can't help if you insist on refusing it!"

Flare floored the gas pedal and shot off onto the street, hitting Agent Smith in the process and sending him flying across their hood and over the rooftop. By now the police had caught up with them and had sealed off all possible escape routes within a few blocks radius, but Flare persisted and saw an opening through a construction zone.

Ignoring their departure, Mary roared, "Help me? You call THIS helping me?"

"Face it Mary, there's nothing left for you here! The sooner I realized this, the sooner I could let go. I'm free!" He circled around her, watching her body heave as she panted. "And I'm here to relieve you from this madness!"

"At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. You and your so-called friends are the filthy swine that brands humanity as beasts. You dare to call me hopeless? I'm not the foot soldier of a lunatic that speaks of pseudo nonsense!"

Bullets exploded through the back window of the getaway car as Smith had easily recovered from the collision, glass showering over the passengers' heads in cacophony. Then the Lincoln lost control as the Agent shot out the back tires, forcing Flare to guide them directly into a hydro pole.

Mouse kept his distance and remained fulsome as he replied, "I have faith in Morpheus… And I hope that you can too."

"You're so naive… Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope."

Shaken, Mary stumbled away from him towards the construction site. She glared down the road at Smith who was steadily approaching the crashed vehicle in a menacing tread. She held onto her wounded shoulder with one hand, while the other dangled at her hips uselessly, blood dripping from the makeshift bandage. Her body stiffened into an abrupt halt as bullets fired over her shoulders and towards Smith's back.

"Look out!" Mary found herself calling after the unknowing Agent, sinking into a crawl as more gunfire ensued.

Smith turned just as the shells pierced through him –or rather, _would_ have pierced through him. Mary watched in absolute astonishment as the man phased in hazy motion to evade every bullet that Mouse dared to fire upon him. When the firing ceased, and Smith had dodged certain death, Mary realized that this was no ordinary man –if a man at all. As Smith returned the favor towards Mouse, Agent Pierce and Agent Bryce appeared from nearby buildings. A total war zone erupted as the police crept closer towards the scene with SWAT shields and shotguns drawn. The other Agents shot at the Terrorists who had since emerged from the car, and they fought back diligently. Mary remained prone and crawled as quickly towards the construction site as her weakened body would permit.

Behind Mouse, the gas station ignited into a massive cloud of smoldering smoke and caused an inferno to spread amongst the street. Gasoline fed flames licked down the slanted road towards the crew and their hunters, but the Agents remained focused on their targets.

Mary darted the remainder of the way, ignoring the various caution signs, and jumped into an opened manhole. She fell a few feet before grabbing a rust encrusted metal rung to catch herself in mid fall. It was evident that the construction crew had been interrupted from their duties and had fled the scene as a few flashlights and miners' hardhats had been deserted. She choked on the wretched stench and fell the rest of the way down, landing on a metal platform in a hard thump. Gagging on air itself, she put on one of the miners' hats and equipped herself against the unraveled darkness with two flashlights.

She darted through the vast tunnel system, trying to avoid the murky brown waters below as much as possible as the reek tore at her nostrils. She hadn't a clue where she was headed, and thus allowed her instinct to guide her through the many twists and turns of the underground labyrinth. The running and splashing water polluted the noise so she could barely hear her own footsteps, let alone someone's who may have decided to follow her down into the city's underbelly. Then finally she came to an area that had been vandalized by time, and the crumbling wall revealed a restricted section of a subway station.

Mary entered cautiously, removing evidence of her sewer expedition into a garbage can as she poked her head into an electrical room. It was empty aside from some abandoned clipboards and half eaten pizza slices. She stealthily tiptoed through the technologically advanced room, passed behind a distracted worker, and managed to find her way out onto the empty subway platform.

"The Orange Line?" she muttered to herself, looking up at the faded orange paint that swept from one end of the platform wall to the other.

"Are you lost?" Called a male voice that came from behind, making her nearly jump out of her skin.

Her shoulders cringed as she twisted her neck to see Agent Pierce mere footsteps away from her, and then she fully turned around to face him. Her stance was poor and her reflexes weathered, making her an absolute joke in comparison to his inhuman abilities.

"Sorry about the tea… and the sanitizer." She wheezed out, remaining callously calm even when he pulled out his Desert Eagle. "But I guess it's too late for apologies."

"It's a pity, Miss Simms," he aimed his handgun towards her chest and continued, "but this is what happens when you choose passion over reason."

Still unfazed, she simply stated, "I made a stupid decision, I admit that, but you're making a grave mistake."

"I disagree Miss Simms," he pulled the trigger, firing a single bullet into her chest at point-blank range. "Only humans make mistakes."

Mary fell to her knees, gasping for air as blood filled her lungs at a rapid pace. She coughed up blood onto the cement and prepared for a swift death… but as minutes passed, her lungs drained and refrained her from drowning. They had healed around the bullet that still remained embedded within her flesh. She regained to her feet and stared cynically at the Agent, her eyes flaring with the question: _Am I human?_

Even behind his sunglasses, Pierce could not hide his own confusion. But before she could make another move, he unloaded the remainder of his magazine into her entire front side. Red mist spouted from her back and stained the air temporarily with each gunshot. She instantly slapped flat onto the floor again, cradling her front side in agony while Pierce stood over her in triumph. A sliver of a smirk curled against his otherwise vacant façade, while his eyes hid behind his dark sunglasses.

"Perseverant until the end…" He grinned, leisurely pacing around her slumped form as if eager to play with his newfound toy some more. "Just like your extremist acquaintances, right before they die. Except they put up more of a fight than you do."

Between gasps of air, she spat at his feet. "I-I'm not, o-one of the terro-"

A gun handle came crashing down against Pierce's skull and sent him tumbling over Mary's hunched body onto the train tracks below. Mouse had returned to her aid once again, using a pistol as a blunt weapon.

"Oh no… NO!" Mouse screeched when he saw her collapse lifelessly within the crimson pool that surrounded her. "MARY!"

A hand lunged after his ankle and hurled him down onto the tracks, his pistol slipping from his grasp in the process. Mouse's head landed inches away from the electrified third-rail, prompting him to sigh in relief as he lied in the safe zone. Then the Agent sent a flurry of relentless kicks into Mouse's ribcage as rage warped Pierce's face.

The bleeding had concluded and Mary's eyes shot open once more. Once again she had cheated death, and once again she was no closer to leaving this dreadful place behind her. With her head still rested on the floor, her hair swimming in the blood, she watched Pierce from his shoulders up and noted the hint of sadism that brightened his face. As much as she didn't agree with the Terrorists, sitting idly by as someone was beaten to a pulp did not rest easy with her. Her eyes skidded across the blood pool to find Mouse's pistol within arm's reach.

Pierce grabbed Mouse's staggered body and pulled him up so he could use him as a punching bag. The boy was clearly outmatched and even though he managed to block some hits, Pierce pounded through his defense.

Mary crept her hand closer to the pistol, making sure the Agent was still focused on his punching bag, and then snatched it towards her chest. Keeping on her side, she inched her way towards them like a caterpillar, falling still whenever she suspected eyes were watching over her.

A burst of high-speed metal grinding screeched from the subway tunnel, alerting the duelists to the presence of an oncoming train. Mary seized the opportunity and fired at the distracted Pierce, the bullets plummeting through his kneecaps. Mouse scooted away from his opponent on his bottom, ignoring the fact that the Agent's arm was now in contact with the third rail. Instead, through painful hauls he began to pull himself over the ledge to rejoin Mary's side.

But through Mary's eyes, all she saw was a single elderly man lying across the three rails. His body vibrated like he was lying in a massage chair as the voltage pulsated through him. White smoke drifted from his form that was soon consumed by the train barreling over him.

"Mary!" She heard Mouse call her as she coasted back into reality and realized Mouse was pulling her onto the subway train. "It's a miracle! You're alive! ALIVE! I don't understand it though, how can that be?"

The car they occupied was completely empty aside for some orphaned newspapers and food wrappers. But Mary still refused to look into Mouse's eyes, intrigued by her bullet torn body that managed to function regardless of her supposed human mortality.

"I'm not sure, but I think I just killed a man." Her voice was oblivious to emotion and her eyes had grown icier than usual.

"That was no man. That was an Agent. You don't have to feel anything for them, Mary. They are nothing and they are-"

"-Everyone." She finished for him and then finally raised her eyes to his. "They-they're p-programs! They're security programs?"

"W-what makes you say that?" Mouse asked, holding her hands in his lap as they rested on a bench.

"Don't you remember? You always said the world was like a computer operating system. If we are like software, then they are like security programs!" She seemed surprised at his reaction, and disregarded the fact that the train was slowing to a stop. "He's a machine! You're fighting him because he's a machine and you're a human being! A slave caught between the Matrix and the real world, the barren wasteland of darkness!"

"…How do you know about that, Mary?" Mouse's eyebrows furrowed as he squeezed her hands to a bright red. "What did you tell them? What have you do-"

The car doors flung open and Agent Pierce burst into the train, his body fully restored and functioning exceptionally well from his previous predicament. He raised a fistful of black gunmetal and immediately fired. Mary had her back turned to him but through Mouse's alarmed face she threw herself over him as a shield. The bullets shattered through Mary's shoulders and spine as her nails dug into Mouse's neck, her mouth parted in torment.

After the seventh bullet had torn through her flesh, she squawked, "He's empty" and her body drooped over his.

Mouse adjusted accordingly, and carried her unconscious body over his arm. He piled out of the train, spinning and turning through teems of people as he struggled to find an exit. Then after barging through a group of chattering young girls, he found a clear passage to the upper level. Because of the extra baggage he bore, the Agent was fast on his tail as they careened through the crowds into the street. It was Mary's home neighborhood.

Mouse dove from the street into the labyrinth of alleyways that led to Mary's house, his eyes frantically darting from turn to turn as he attempted to diverge his pursuer. He vaguely recalled the area and with the houses all looking the same amidst the white blur of snow, he found himself seemingly running in circles. But for now, somehow he managed to lose the Agent off his trail.

"M-M-Mouse?" Mary coughed, her fingers vaguely twitching as she regained consciousness. "H-how did you plant a cell phone in m-m-my mother's room?"

Continuing to navigate through the maze he answered without hesitation, "I broke in and left it there. I always wanted to be just a phone call away, even if you moved... I guess it was more of a reminder to myself that you were still there, even though you had no idea I was still too."

Mary laughed, shifting in his grip. "You're such a hopeless romantic that it's cute. It's a shame I have to friend zone you though, you're too young for me."

He chuckled but it died as Agent Bryce appeared at their next turn, his gun already aiming towards them.

"Shit!" Mouse sprung into another turn as Bryce shot at the male target.

He recklessly skated over paths of pure ice as he neared the Simms household, its smoke still drifting gracefully up into the gray sky. Mouse pushed Mary over the fence and called from the opposite side, "Hide upstairs, I'll be back for you!"

Mary laid in the snow and gazed up at the lifeless clouds, listening to Mouse's crunching footsteps echo away. She felt nothing anymore as her nerves had been stripped with each bullet she withstood, and she wondered how she could escape this reality if she could not die. Then she gathered to her feet and calmly proceeded into her house as if returning from a normal trip downtown. She walked into her living room and recovered her bus ticket from its resting place within a drawer. Her gaze rose up to her Mother's license plate and she mouthed the passage.

Then a window smashed as a bullet whizzed over her shoulder and across the room, rooting itself into a stack of oil paint cans. The paint spewed out across the floor and edged towards the dancing flames in her fireplace. Mary threw herself into a crouch as another bullet flew in and she scrambled into the hallway and up the stairs into her Mother's bedroom. She pushed the queen bed into the door to barricade it and she sat hidden in a corner beside the upstairs fireplace.

The winds grew harsh outside and whipped at the nearby windows, rattling them as the orange glow that flickered on her war torn face now alit beneath the floorboards. The smoke detector on the main floor hollered as black smoke crept between the floorboards as well as under the bedroom door. The oil paint was still fresh on the walls, and it ignited like nitrate film.

Just as another gust clawed at the window, it smashed open as Mouse pummeled through it and landed at bedside. The wind snatched the bus ticket from her grasp and sent it flying into the fireplace, obliterating it from existence. Mary's eyes enkindled with a newborn ferocity that further warped her puckering brows.

"Mary, what are you doing?" Mouse was surprised to see her there and attempted to grab her arm, but she shrugged him off.

"You told me to hide, and I did." With a grimace, she arose to her feet, and he followed her lead. "But you and your friends have given me your final order."

She pulled out her pistol from the back of her pants and fired four times, each bullet planting itself firmly within a section of both of his arms.

"Mary, what the hell?" He cried, standing weak-kneed as he tried to remain motionless to minimize the pain.

Outside of the bedroom came a feminine coughing, and then a battering of fists at the door.

"Mouse are you alright? Mouse! Answer me!" Called Flare before the smoke stole her breath again.

Mary turned to the door as he continued his battle to stand, and shot the remaining bullets from where she determined was the woman's abdominal area and directly up to her forehead.

"FLARE!" Mouse cried, stumbling onto the floor as blood snuck under the door and bed towards them. "You're a monster! You've been corrupted! Don't you see that? I wanted to undo that Mary, I wanted to free you!"

"I am doing society a favor. Making a sacrifice to put an end to a menace that causes more problems than solves them and takes pleasure in taking innocent lives along the way. That is what I define as corruption, Mouse." Mary explained, prowling around his whimpering form.

"You are a slave to the Matrix, Mary." Mouse sniveled.

"Shackles come with certain opportunities." Mary stated.

"Put your ego aside, and see the truth: You have no future here!"

"We all have an ego, it's what we do with it that matters. And I'm afraid my future doesn't reside in a tyrannical maniac's grasp." Mary grinned, watching him clamber towards the broken window. "You are the slave, Mouse, a pawn driven by another's malicious intent."

Mary remained in the middle of the smoky room as the floor beneath began to cave in. One of the nameless members of the terrorist grouped hurtled through the window and rolled to a stop with his handguns drawn directly on her.

She dropped her empty pistol and kicked it towards the newcomer. "Go on, do it. Right between the eyes! Send me to the Maker!"

Uncertainty was swiped from Mouse's face to the man's, and he unloaded his weapons at the floor surrounding her feet. This advanced the weakening process of the charring wood, and sent her tumbling to the lower floor amidst timber debris and red-hot coals. Smashing into the living room floor, she looked up through the hellish inferno to see if the two would finally leave her be. Rather than seeing a face or two, she was greeted by a section of the ceiling collapsing onto her face and knocking her unconscious.

Shadows consumed Mary's vision and clogged her mind while her senses were completely eliminated. She tried to squirm through her frozen state of darkness, but the strange silence staggered on. The idea of being caught in purgatory screamed at her while she thought aimlessly towards a conclusion.

"_Am I in a coma?_" She wondered, the notion of being conscious within an unconscious condition dragging through the leftover relics of fragments from her life.

While she still could not see or hear anything, she thought of what her life accomplishments were and swiftly came to the conclusion that she achieved nothing. Aside from that, she also remained an abomination to the human race, but that further swayed her to the Agent's side.

Then a distant voice crippled the serenity, a voice that belonged to Pompous Pierce.

"_Can she hear us?_" He grumbled, irritation leaking into every syllable.

"_No, she is sedated._" Agent Bryce immediately responded.

"_How can she be alive? No human or lesser exile could endure that much damage and sustain a pulse of forty-five!_" Pierce snapped, even in her slumber she could see a vein bulging in his forehead.

There was a drawn out pregnant pause, until Bryce answered, "_Cheat codes. An invincibility or immunity cheat code, perhaps?_"

"_Impossible! They were all destroyed._" Pierce growled.

"_Not all of them…_" Agent Smith finally raised his voice. "_More have surfaced, and some discovered by wrongful hands._"

"_The Merovingian?_" Pierce pondered, as his voice gradually grew louder as footsteps drew close. "_How much do you know about cheat codes?_"

Pierce was answered with silence and Mary heard a struggle of fabric, and then a small glass smash against a ceramic floor.

"_So when did you pay the Frenchman a visit? What does he want in return?_" Pierce persisted, his pacing evident by the crunching of glass beneath his shoes.

"_An exile dead._"

"_What type?_"

"_A seraphim._"

Pierce gave a sarcastic chuckle, "_Good luck. I hope you already made the necessary travel arrangements then, seeing how this disables the usual method._"

"_I have. The Trainman will drop her off at State and Balbo._"

Bryce cheeped in, "_What makes your candidate superior to Pierce's?_"

"_Mine isn't sitting in a mental ward with a criminal record." _Smith replied, as if confirming a well-known fact.

_ "Yours is barely out of adolescence." _Pierce noted.

_ "She killed a member of the resistance, wounded another, and provided us with some valuable biographical information. No easy task by an ordinary human. You underestimate her."_

_ "I underestimated your stupidity. Your judgment is clouded and your intellect infantile, selecting incapable candidates as usual. You may have been granted this trivial matter, but she will not last long. She is just another number, four-zero-four to be precise._"

"_The Architect wants proficient patients for this project, not sloppy small-time thugs._" Smith stated, his voice eerily calm.

"_Regardless, she is your responsibility now. Give her the serum, and then go finish your deal with the Merovingian. Bryce and I will escort her when the time arrives._"

Mary still felt nothing when she heard the faint sound of a syringe plunging into flesh. But as the Agents sparked another argument, their words slurred together to become an inaudible language of binary nonsense. Somehow the black hole she found herself embedded into became darker as she sank deeper into oblivion. The remaining thoughts of her life became compressed and almost non-existent as she slipped further away from life.

Then as she thought she had been wholly swallowed by shadows, a stream of blinding electric blue light penetrated the darkness and forced her to open her eyes. But when she opened them, the sight that greeted her made her wish that she had kept them closed.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is my first fanfiction story that I have ever written... _Constructive reviews_would be highly appreciated!


	8. Chapter 8

**AUTHOR'S NOTES: **Sorry that this took so long, but I hope it was well worth the wait!

**Fun Fact:** The story has officially hit 100 pages! Well, 107 to be precise.

* * *

A flurry of air bubbles through pink water concealed Mary's vision as she struggled to find a sense of reality through this surreal nightmare. Thick magenta liquid stung at her eyes while they tried desperately to focus onto her surroundings. Her throat pulsated while her body was sent into a frantic spasm throughout a gelatin confinement. As she wildly lashed about, webbings of metallic tubes and copper IV cables tugged at her sickeningly pale skin and made her realize that she was bound to an unknown source via outlets that were grafted into her flesh. She also quickly came to comprehend that she was completely hairless and naked, like a fetus in an amnion.

She clawed at the clear elastic shroud that separated her from the oxygen she direly required. Her limbs were devoid of all feeling and her insides felt as though they were trapped within a tense trance that had been cursed upon her for a lifetime. Then her fingers ruptured through the rubbery cocoon and she freed herself of a mechanical wire that was inserted through her mouth and down into the depths of her throat. After she sucked in the musty air like a fish on its last breath, she fully emerged from the oval capsule and stood shivering as she overlooked the horrifying scenery from her perch. The slick and vicious glue that coated her body began to solidify like curdled milk, but the sights of the new surroundings kept her from noticing.

Strands of raw electricity spiraled across the landscape that consisted only of skyscraping pillars that were honeycombed with the same dimly glowing, magenta capsules that she was confined to. The only abnormality amongst them was her broken pod, as the rest of her kind laid motionless within their ooze-filled catacombs. Despite her ears being clogged with crystallized jelly, the sounds of the treacherous dream world were incomprehensible and could only be compared to what the sea sounded like from the belly of a kraken. She wondered if she was in some type of factory as the ceiling was blocked out from view by the pillars, and the floor far below was blackened with murkiness.

Before Mary could begin to piece the imagery with knowledge prior to her dark awakening, a machine dropped down directly in front of her and hovered like a bee before a bloomed flower. It was roughly the size of an average sedan and its alloyed metal design was of a flying insect crossed with a crustacean. It opened its polymer claws to reveal gleaming circuits and pneumatic fingers that snatched Mary by the neck, leaving her gasping for air while it examined its catch. Within its reflective tearless retina, she viewed the stranger that consumed her face. It was skeletal and kissed by radiated therapy, like a zombie awoken from the dead. Then her eyes snapped shut in pure agony as a cable disengaged itself from the back of her head and the machine released her from its grasp. The other connective hoses popped off one by one and slithered away from her form as the machine continued to study her. Slumped into a ball, she stared back at the mechanical monstrosity and awaited its final judgment.

Then another fearsome machine rose up and gawked down at her pathetic form, seemingly scanning for a match. This one looked like a sawed-open garbage truck with pincers for a face. Its body jerked forwards and it scooped her up onto its back, which was a legless version of a gurney. She laid with her arms wrapped around her chest like a straitjacket while thin cables strapped her onto the surface like seatbelts. Her heavy eyelids begged to be closed but she held them open, as she was carried away from her cell and deeper into the unknown.

Mary choked for a moment, as she was shocked from both the machine reaching a higher altitude and how her belief in the Matrix had been sealed. Below were endless ravines that contained the same pillars that she was pried from, but from this height they appeared more like fields. Grazing over them were gigantic canister machines with squid-like arms that seemed to be picking and rearranging certain pods, like some form of jellyfish-like harvester. Black swarms of significantly smaller machines passed by in intervals, these ones appeared to have a mixture of squid and spider-like qualities in their features. Although surprisingly it wasn't these robotic creatures that disturbed Mary the most, it was what she saw when her eyes settled back towards the sky.

Churning black sludge were the clouds that refused to leak even the slightest sliver of light through the scorched sky. It was as lifeless and drained of color as the rest of this world. This place had become uninhabitable, a barren land of darkness that no human would willingly accept. Machines that shepherded over human kind to keep them safe ruled it. It wasn't the Matrix. She had been extracted and given a dark awakening into a black desert: The real world.

Mary wanted nothing more than to return to the Matrix now as she faced the horrifying truth of reality. Everything that Agent Smith had told her was true and now she felt an even greater incline to help him. Why Mouse and the terrorists would wage a war against the machines over the hellish state that the real world laid in was beyond her. Anyone who considered the Matrix a burden was clearly mistaken, as only madmen could view the withered earth formed from the ashes of perilous human faults as home. The Matrix was good, the Matrix was life; it may have been an imaginary world, but it provided absolute happiness that the real world never could.

With a weak yawn, her eyes sealed shut as the carrier machine hummed towards its destination. She couldn't bear the weight of reality any longer and decided to rest her frail body before her mind could make any drastic choices. She hoped her dreams would open a gateway back into the Matrix, and shortly afterwards, she fell back into a deep sleep.

An old man's eyes opened to slits when a babbling young boy disturbed his midday nap. From his makeshift bed that consisted of some boxes and a broken bench, the homeless man noticed that an Asian male dressed in white with glossy circular sunglasses accompanied the boy. This man was linking hands with the boy and appeared to be leading him somewhere specified, which contorted the homeless man's face as the entire neighborhood was abandoned.

Their pace was swift at first but the boy slowed them down significantly by his constant chatter and desire to pick up deserted objects uncovered by melted snow. The Asian man attempted to humbly hush him, but the young boy pressed onwards until he successfully managed to seize his tiny hands upon a broken bottle. Within moments of the glass pressing against his flesh, the entire bottle materialized into a state of new.

The homeless man's jaw dropped as he watched this sorcery unfold before his very eyes, but snapped it shut when the bottle was smashed upon the ground again.

"Seraph, can't we rest here? Please! Please Seraph?" The boy whined, clearly beginning to get on the Asian man's nerves.

"…Seraph?" The homeless man muttered to himself as his eyes followed the two to a city maintenance hut.

Then both his facial features and body instantaneously froze as an unworldly feeling stirred within his body. In mere moments, an endless green river of bizarre codes and equations flowed across his face while his body sprung into a possessed spasm. Blurred static spread across his form like a swarm of locusts and then finally, his body dissolved and another being emerged in its place. Agent Smith.

Seraph retrieved one of several keys that dangled from a chain hanging around his neck and pushed it into the lock. With a successful twist, the door opened to reveal a luminously white industrial hallway. The boy was taken aback by the secret passage, but Seraph remained tranquil. From across the incandescent corridor, a black woman dressed in white robes emerged from the opposite dark green door. The boy exchanged his hand from Seraph's to the newcomer's and stepped into the surreal location.

"Are you the Oracle?" The boy asked the woman, who instantly smiled.

"No, but-" She began but was promptly repressed by a bullet skimming over the boy's head and into her stomach.

Seraph's eyes darted back to see the fistful of black metal that was Agent Smith's Desert Eagle, glaring at him like a third eye even from a distance. Smith fired again, but Seraph slammed the door shut to save the boy's tiny head. The door creaked open behind him as he stared at his opponent, revealing the severed connection to the mysterious hallway as construction equipment greeted the sunlight.

Gun flash tongues curled from Smith's gun as the bullets floated through liquid space towards Seraph's vital organs with deadly precision. The air surrounding the two sizzled as Seraph cart wheeled and weaved around the incoming lead at impossible speeds. He escaped into a nearby building with a collapsed façade, leaving the Agent to race after his prize. With each step Smith made, Seraph made ten more as he fled noiselessly through a multi-floored chain of corroding townhouses. The rumbling of heavy treads echoed throughout the bleak hallways of broken homes and finally they came to a sudden halt as Smith realized he was chasing a ghost.

The Agent slowed to an amble pace with his gun at the ready as he proceeded up another staircase. Only the sound of dripping water seeping through the exposed walls tickled his ears, while the distant smell of leaking gas tingled his nose. At the top he peered into a bathroom, it was empty, and then turned back around to meet a flurry of white fists and feet that seemingly stroke him all at once. Seraph easily disarmed the distracted Agent and whipped his handgun down the quintuple flight of stairs. Smith parried the next round of blows as they increased in speed, and countered with a set of his own. The brutal force would have been fatal to an ordinary being, but Seraph brushed them off like paper cuts.

Smith snatched Seraph by the neck and prepared to launch him into a brick wall, when Seraph broke the grapple with kicks that climbed Smith's torso and finished off at his chin. Before the Agent could recover, Seraph sent a neck-snapping roundhouse kick to Smith's glasses, shattering them on impact. Smith's face warped with rage as they fell off his face, his eyes glaring with the animosity of a rabid wolf. Smith snapped back with thrusts of relentless fists to Seraph's abdomen, each a pounding jackhammer. Despite his accuracy, his ferocity pummeled around Seraph's body and crunched through the outer wall of the house. Chunks of brick and plaster exploded like shrapnel across their faces, and Smith hurled Seraph off the edge of the building.

Five stories below, the seraphim smashed into the asphalt with an ear cringing smack. Smith quickly returned to Seraph's side to inspect the damage to have his frown deepen further. The man laid motionless inside the crater, and aside from minor scrapes, only his cracked sunglasses had been torn from his face and now rested at his side.

"The rumors were true about your kind, you are hard ones to find. No wonder you face expatriation, when half of your coding has been erased. But what do you call a seraphim without any wings?" Smith inquired with the faintest smile as Seraph's eyes fluttered open. "Judas. I suppose the Merovingian truly is a man of vengeance."

With unfazed movement, Seraph gathered to his feet and stated in a soft-spoken voice, "I do not serve him anymore."

"Of course not. You do not serve him, nor do you serve the system. Therefore you are purposeless." Smith stepped closer and Seraph held his ground. "It's time for you to realize that your kind is a dying breed, absolved of its duties some time ago. Stand-down and accept your fate, exile.

Seraph bowed his head and directly met the Agent's machine-calm eyes with his own, "So be it."

He thrashed with lethal fury against his suited opponent, sending waves upon waves of savage kicks and stabbing jabs. Smith endured the hits and even managed to successfully land a few crude strikes of his own, but the seraphim progressively overpowered him as he was buried into a concrete wall. He stood there in the dying sunlight, wedged upright into the temporary mausoleum as Seraph charged back into the labyrinth of dissipated architecture. Despite the exile's efforts, the Agent speedily recovered and was back in hot pursuit.

Smith regained his half loaded gun and blurred through the townhouses once more. The sound of splashing water exposed Seraph's position and Smith ran in sharp, long strides, as the sound grew stronger along with the returning smell of sulfur. Through the skeletal floorboards, Smith found that he was rapidly closing the gap upon his prey, and with a few more strides, he plunged through the floor and into the murky basement.

Seraph's soft footsteps rang to a stop against the tomb-gray concrete, his white clothing barely visible in the sun deprived crook of the room. Smith advanced closer across the eroded floor, his handgun focused solely on the exile's shadowy head.

"Dead end." Smith announced with a snarl, growing weary of the seraphim's insolent retaliation. "Why keep running? You're only delaying the inevitable."

From the darkness, Seraph replied, "I protect that which matters most."

"I protect the system. Not you!" Smith roared, edging closer through the floor of branching pipelines and electrical wiring as he ignored the intense stench of sulfur. "The Merovingian is not the only one with a price on your head."

"You do not fight for the Frenchman. You fight for someone else." Seraph's gentle voice awoke something within his foe. "Someone you wish to protect."

Agent Smith was speechless, although his earpiece declared that this 'someone' was currently in danger, and then his calm expression was shredded by pure rage.

He ferociously pulled the trigger of his Desert Eagle, the rest of its clip firing towards the seraphim's head. But just as the bullets were mere inches from reaching their target, Seraph ducked to reveal an opened fuse box on the wall. The box exploded with white sparks as it kicked on, lighting the room with a searing orange glow as the exposed wires ignited the leaking gas line beneath Smith's feet. The flames spread over his form like a cancer, metastasizing at binary speed.

In the blistering shadows of the Agent's demise, Seraph found a previously hidden doorway and unlocked it with one of his keys. As he entered the heavenly hallway, he turned back and lowered his head in quiet prayer as the Agent had been replaced by a crisping homeless man. As the excruciating screeches faded, the door closed and the seraphim disappeared.

Ratcheting clatter and hissing pipes pulled Mary from her peaceful doze and thrust her back into the nightmare of the real. This time she found herself confined to a chair made entirely of black steel with chrome tentacles locking her in like a test dummy. Unlike before, her body had been wrapped in cheap fabrics to provide warmth and privacy from prying eyes of the others in the room. The others were slumbering human beings as well, strapped into the same chairs that were selectively spaced from each other. From what Mary could gather from her position, there were roughly twenty of them, and various minuscule demonic machines with blood-red eyes were carefully monitoring all of them.

The celestial room itself was woven in industrial chrome and coiling fibers that extended like intestines from the floor to the knuckled flying buttresses. The under lit ribbed vaulting of the ceiling sparked occasionally with angry bursts of lightning, making Mary wonder if the room was self sustainable.

As she continued to gawk from her seat at what she gathered to be the VIP chamber of Hell, a group of the mechanical insects crawled over to her powerless form. They crept up her exposed flesh, sending shivers and goose bumps across her spine as their icy metal left indents with each step. Then like mosquitoes, they jabbed their hypodermic proboscises into her skin, with some stealing her blood while others injected her with a numbing serum. As she continued to wince at every needle, her attention drifted over to the glowing white waveforms that occupied the plasma screens of her station. Each spiked with every injection, and she tried to dismiss the pain with her interest drawn to another set of screens on the opposite side of her chair. These monitors displayed black backgrounds with a constant flow of lime green data. The glowing information that passed by made binary code look juvenile in comparison as it contained extraordinary codes, equations, and symbols.

Before she could bother to even attempt to decipher any hidden messages, the injections ceased as skeletal alloy vertebras replaced the robotic insects. These mechanical creatures silently glided around her like a swarm of malevolent sharks as they hooked her skin outlets up to a machine behind her view.

Through her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of a coaxial line slithering gracefully up towards the back of her neck like a cobra with a cerebrum chip for fangs. After a few disturbing clicks, the line successfully jacked into the back of her head and her shoulders bunched together as her face tightened into a grimace.

Then her eyes shot open to a blinding light. She blinked away the daze and found her form was completely relaxed as she realized that she was no longer in the presence of the mechanical demons. Her surroundings had shifted to a deserted subway station coated in heavenly white ceramic tiles and bright fluorescent lights. She noticed her hair had magically returned and the holes in her arms had disappeared. Even her clothing had changed to a more modernized black business blazer and dress with a red blouse.

The platform was eerily silent as if neither train nor soul had crossed the place in years and Mary found herself curling her fingers anxiously. She arose to her feet from a metal bench and skimmed the area. No doorways besides the train tunnel entrance and exit existed and she discovered that the station was called "Mobil Ave".

"Limbo Ave?" She questioned herself aloud as her mind raced over the anagram. "How lovely…"

An uneasy groan erupted from her throat as she tried to remain calm, but the immediate response of her groan echoing refrained her from communicating with herself. She was growing tired of this dimension already and no clocks were present to inform her how much time had passed since she arrived. She began to pace in the hopes that she would somehow stumble upon a loophole or secret exit.

To her delight, the floor eventually began to rumble, signaling that a train was approaching. The familiar sound of clattering metal screeched down the urban throat and she dashed over to the platform to greet her savior. As the cars pierced through the darkness of the tunnel and slowed to a stop, her nerves remained tense, as the train was empty aside from its operator.

The car doors nearest to her position slid open and a wide-eyed derelict beckoned her onboard with unwavering aggravation. She found herself glued to the spot as the grimy man towered over her by almost two feet.

"Hurry up!" He growled, baring teeth that were surely a dentist's nightmare. "I can't idle here all day, Missy."

Only making the slightest effort to move closer to him, she asked, "Where's Smith? Or rather, Agent Smith?"

"Does it look like I care about an agent, let alone their name? Those bastards are all the same anyways. Two of them are waiting for you back at Balbo – our next stop." He answered swiftly, pulling her onboard by the arm.

The door slammed shut behind them and before Mary could bother to ask any more questions, the Trainman had disappeared into the operator's control station. She let out another irritated groan and quickly found a seat just as the train jolted into motion. When the brightness of Limbo faded behind, her eyes found refuge in the black walls that were zipping passed. Her mind trailed along the walls as a trivia of questions formed within her head regarding the Agency and the terrorists alike.

The entirety of the journey was quiet and uneventful; it reminded her of what she always dreamt of rail transit being. At points she even felt waves of superiority as phrases like "first-class" and "VIP" casually drifted in and out of her brain. But they subsided as graffiti covered concrete and flickering dim lights flourished against the darkness. Through the glass windows Mary found two familiar faces scowling back at her, Agents Bryce and Pierce, and as usual, they were both as miserable as the next. When the doors opened to freedom, she hesitantly departed her seat and carefully observed the two as her feet carried her off the train. After the calamity of previous events, Mary was positive that neither Agent would be welcoming her with open arms, never mind even a simple greeting.

She stopped within ample breathing room from the two, not wishing to further overdue her welcome. All three of them remained silent as the train rolled away behind them, studying each other like foreign objects.

"Hi… Sorry about before… I didn't want to-" Mary started, her voice quivering with embarrassment.

"It is now irrelevant. Your choices and life prior to this point are classified and furthermore, non-existent. You will now be addressed as 'Beta four-zero-four'." Agent Pierce clarified, noting Mary's seemingly diminishing confidence. "Consider yourself no further on the totem pole than you were two days ago."

Mary subtly nodded; loads of regret already pumping through her veins as she suspected Pierce to be under the 'I don't get mad, I get even' mentality. Then she proceeded to follow them through the turnstiles, up a small stairway, and towards the recognizable Lincoln Continental. She squinted at the afternoon sunlight gleaming off of the black exterior, ignoring the fact that she was partially blocking the sidewalk for some passing pedestrians. Agent Bryce gently pushed her into the backseat, the slam of the car door behind him clearing her hazy eyes, and he joined Pierce in the front. Once again, silence befell the three as they glided back into traffic.

While she already gathered that nosing into potentially confidential information was going to backfire at her, she bit her cheek and quietly asked, "Agent Smith is on another assignment right now?"

"Correct." Bryce finally replied, simply and firmly.

Mary's gaze lazily drifted to the floor and her heart instantly sank to her bowels. Sitting beneath the passenger seat was the note she had given to Smith prior to awakening in the real world. She picked it up to find it was still sealed, only to have it snatched away by Pierce.

"'Smith'…" he read her cursive writing, "What is this?"

"It's confidential… It was a gift. Well, more just a letter actually. It's nothing." She tried to be as forthcoming as possible, although her hesitant tone proved otherwise. "It's not worth getting defensive over."

"Apparently it is, four-zero-four." He noted, tucking it away within one of his jacket pockets. "Remember that your previous affiliation with Agent Smith is now as insignificant as your own status. Hereby you shall only be permitted professional relationships with anyone you come into contact with. I will also take the opportunity to state that if you are caught having a relationship of any other form than you will be terminated without hesitation."

Mary's eyes narrowed to slits as Pierce pounded at her self-esteem.

"Let's get this straight right now, Sir. One, I am more than just a number and two, why am I such a threat to you?" She watched as Bryce's lips parted in what appeared to be shock while Pierce's fingers curled into each other on the steering wheel. "What are you, afraid that I'll dethrone you off that mighty pedestal of yours? Cut the strings of the Puppet Master from his fellow marionettes? Because as we both know, 'Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.'"

Pierce remained quiet and pretended to be focusing exclusively on the traffic and not Mary's attempt at rebuttal.

Then Mary turned her attention to Bryce, "And here we have a prime specimen of such victims. Manipulated by another's hate addiction and degraded to the life of the backbench bobble head at the expense of his own voice. His identity being dependent upon the weight of obedience that constantly tips the scales, but never in his favor. Being granted only false authority, and stands nothing more than just a shallow shell of a man. How does it feel Agent Bryce, knowing just how expendable you truly are? Depressing isn't it? But then again, I'm sure any form of feeling was torn out of you some time ago. Just another burdened bastard of the AI society."

"You listen girl…" Pierce hissed back at her through the rear view mirror with audible venom. "As a Beta, you will be undergoing a series of tests, and as soon as you fail one of them, you will be destroyed and forgotten. Why? Because you are nothing and nobody; a lifeless little brat."

Mary's eyes glimmered, but not with tears, instead with ruthless scorn as she grinned, "Finally something we have in common!"

Bryce tried to intervene but was abruptly cut off when both his and Pierce's earpieces alerted them of an incoming call. They nodded a silent exchange and Pierce careened the vehicle towards a slummed district.

"So would one of you fine gentlemen care to enlighten me as to what the hell is going on?" Mary asked with vibrant bitterness.

"A disturbance. Nothing of your concern, four-zero-four." Agent Bryce answered, knowing that Pierce had nothing more to spout out at the female. "When we arrive you are to stay inside this vehicle at all times, understood?"

"Come now, I don't need to be babysat. Or 'Beta-sat' in this case." Mary grumbled, watching as the neighborhood surrounding them gradually deteriorated before her eyes.

"We need you alive." Pierce stated, scanning the nearby windows as he slowed the car.

Mary chuckled in response, to which the two agents looked to each other in confusion.

"That didn't seem to be an issue just the other day. But that backfired at you, didn't it?" She smirked, watching Pierce's cold eyes flare behind his sunglasses. "Why am I alive anyway? I've cheated death so many times that I've lost count. What makes me so special?"

Although she recalled that it had something to do with cheat codes and the involvement of a Frenchman named the Merovingian, she still wanted a full explanation. However the only response she received were the car doors slamming shut. The car had jerked to a stop and Agent Bryce had bolted out, with Pierce closely trailing after him before either could reply to her inquiry.

Watching them disappear into a narrow alleyway, Mary relieved herself of an aggravated sigh that had been building up. Shortly afterwards, she found herself sitting in silence as not even the adjacent city blocks so much as uttered a faint breeze nor bird chirp, and she had already became attuned to the hum of the still running vehicle. A lone telephone booth stood at the end of the dead end street, seemingly mocking her as she distorted her face in its general direction. She climbed over the seats and tumbled into the front to flip on the radio as the dead air was driving her mad.

Of course as soon as she entered the driver's seat, the rising sound of footsteps alerted her that the pair of Agents were returning. But as they approached she realized that the clicks and clanks belonged to a female's footwear. Concurrently, the telephone booth sprang to life in screaming chimes that would surely attract the attention of any existing populace. Then seamlessly from the shadows came a woman adorned in skintight leather that instantly reminded Mary of the Terrorists. The woman hustled to the vacant phone like a tractor beam and briefly peered around for another set of eyes. Missing Mary's, she seemed satisfied and calmly answered the phone.

"What the…" Mary trailed off as her eyes widened to saucers, glowing white in the fading sunlight.

The female had vanished into thin air, as if her form was sucked through the phone's receiver like a straw. The phone dropped and dangled by its cord as dead tone echoed across the alley and filled Mary's eardrums. As she questioned her grip on reality, the explosions of gunfire whipped her back into motion as another set of feet drew near. Again she recognized that these did not belong to the Agents but no doubt another member of the escaping party.

Numbness fuelled her veins as her mind began to piece together the connection between the phones and the Terrorists. When she first had a private conversation with Agent Smith on that fateful night, he had confiscated a cell phone that Mouse had planted in her house, and preceded to tell her "_they move like ghosts_". Phones and their usage were a recurring trend employed by the Terrorists. Somehow when she first spoke with Morpheus on the telephone he knew exactly what she was doing at all times. It was as if the phones were a form of disguised camera device, or transmitter of data.

Then the more she thought about it, her mind came to a conclusion: They were a gateway that linked that Matrix to the real world. The idea was absurd but the provided evidence made it impossible to ignore.

Another woman dressed in the same style emerged from the alleyway and headed towards the phone booth, as the gunfire grew closer. Unlike the last person, she was limping and a gash in her thigh made it obvious that she had been shot.

Mary's fingers curled around the cool metal of both the steering wheel and the column gear shifter. One foot was set on the floor, while the other firmly planted on brake pedal. She watched as the woman crawled closer, like a lioness about to thin the sick from the herd. Then in a flurry of motion, Mary swung the car into drive and floored the gas pedal. The car raced towards the kill, only to be infringed off course by a stray bullet that shattered the windshield and her concentration alike. Instead she crashed into the phone booth itself, completely disabling it from further use. The deer in the headlights had armed herself, and now the hunter was powerless.

No airbags were deployed as they were non-existent in classic cars and Mary hunched over on the front seat, massaging her neck from the impact. Glass shards had been sprayed across the interior, some finding a new home within her flesh. Then a pair of gloved hands grabbed her and threw her out onto the crackled tarmac. Within moments her eyes were forced to stare intimately into the barrel of a Beretta pistol, and she suddenly forgot about the pain that enveloped her moments ago.

"Who the hell are you?" The woman snapped, burying the metal deeper into Mary's forehead. "Answer me!"

"Just your ordinary law-abiding citizen." Mary purred, feeling her neck crack back as the gun handler dug deeper. And then the glass shards that had been jammed into her face popped out like acne, revealing that the cheat codes were still active. Passively she asked, "What's your name? Oh let me guess, Beretta?"

The mystified woman succumbed to her instincts and allowed her Beretta to respond for her. Time itself halted to a stop as Mary awaited the killing blow and thought she finally felt the icy breath of Death upon her neck. She noticed that this exact feeling must have struck her foe as well because her eyes expanded in sheer terror and glowed with green static. Mary turned her head to find that they were reflecting an evening commuter whose body was blanketed in the same strange codes that she had seen back in the machine world.

Time returned to normal and the sound of an empty gun clicked against the back of her head. The woman took off behind her while Mary's eyes remained drawn to the spasmodic teenaged girl. The equations morphed around the girl's face and curves until a finely dressed man sprung from her body. Agent Smith.

"Smith?" Mary spouted in disbelief as her knees inclined towards the ground. "H-how did you…? W-what are you?"

He approached her without acknowledging her questions and pulled her to her feet, inspecting her now healed wounds.

"Besides being my guardian angel?" She added with a flicker of a smile.

After much hesitance, he replied, "A guardian of the system."

He continued to inspect the damage that she had caused and wordlessly consulted his earpiece.

"So is that what this 'world' consists of? That weird coding back on the outside?" She reclaimed his faint attention, but his lips remained sealed. "Would I be correct if I speculated that that's how they tracked me? How they always had the upper hand? How you found me? I can't even get a simple yes or no… You know I appreciated your honesty before."

"Yes. It is." Smith answered shortly, just before Agent Pierce rejoined them.

Pierce examined the scene of the crime within moments and slowly turned his attention to the speechless Mary.

"What's your reasoning on this, four-zero-four?" Pierce inquired, eerily calm from their previous disputes.

"I saw someone vanish into a phone line before my eyes and I put two and two together. I wasn't going to let another one of them get away that easily." Mary folded her arms and locked her gaze with his. "Sorry it had to be your car that took the bullet."

"Repairs will be in order. However, because of your actions we have neutralized the other fugitive." He acknowledged that Mary's face had loosened from its permanent frown by continuing, "The remainders of your past bank accounts will pay nicely for the damages."

Mary shrugged it off with a smirk, "Money is manmade corruption. The sooner I'm freed from it the better. Besides, your non-existent salaries won't appease the average Joe to fix your car… But then again, all paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."

Her eyes rolled back and forth from both of Pierce's sides to find no third Agent, "Where's Agent Bryce? I hope I didn't scar him too badly."

"We have lost contact with him. Another threat remains in the remote area that needs dealt with. He is taking care of it." Pierce's usual monotone poked its weary head out again.

Apparently Pierce was telling only half of the truth, as Smith justified it by a twitch in his mouth and a twist of his eyebrows. Then their earpieces screamed at them once more, leaving Mary trying to decipher their emotionless faces.

"Another disturbance?" Mary speculated aloud, frustration seeping into her voice. "Am I ever going to start these tests?"

"Consider this your first one." Pierce answered, his hand returning to his side from his ear. Agent Smith shot him a puzzled glance, and he continued, "It would be the same as the simulation, but more at stake. She's your candidate, try to act like you haven't lost your faith."

"W-what is the test?" She asked, trying to ignore their upfront banter.

Smith resumed his stare upon the girl, "A pair of terrorists have been spotted within this area. Eliminate one of them, and apprehend another. Harness how to become hidden, yet seen like a shadow."

"Like you guys?" She pondered, noticing that Pierce appeared surprised by the remark. "So which one of the leathered freaks do we need alive?"

"Either will do." Smith nodded and held out his gun for her to use.

Pierce waved her hand away from the weapon and protested, "Firearms are not permitted in this test; simulation or not. Guns separate the genuine cowards from the genuine assassins."

Mary cocked an eyebrow and offered a smirk, secretly wondering if that statement applied to them as well. Rather than waiting for an invitation to proceed, she hurried into the alley from whence the last terrorist departed. She wasn't given any descriptions of her targets, but like the Agents, they all looked the same.

The darkening sky cast long shadows over the neglected buildings and submerged her into a temporary cloak of black smog. Like fog continuously condensing between liquid and vaporous forms, she darted in and out of view as she kept to the crevices in the walls. Her mind was clear and her body weightless as she carved her way deeper into enemy territory.

Eventually she stumbled upon her first clue at tracking the pair. A torn piece of a red leather jacket that was snagged onto a ragged dumpster waved in the light breeze like a cautionary flag. Then beneath it laid a trail of new footprints within the partially melted snow. She nodded at them as if she were making a silent note to herself and followed them through the urban jungle. An assortment of rubbish lined the pathways and she scavenged a dagger-like shard of a broken mirror along the way, concealing it within her sleeve.

The laneway opened to a central courtyard with a rusted playground and bristly soccer field. It was here where the footprints split off into two separate directions, one to a shopping district and the other to a warehouse. Sirens blared against a flashing blue and red backdrop, making the heavy police presence obvious in the shop jammed street. Her feet diverted towards the gloomy warehouse and quickly found an unhinged door that had been broken down. Wet imprints on the concrete floor made for a fresh trail to the fleeing male across the factory floor from her.

His ear was glued to a cell phone and his eyes hid behind dark sunglasses when he spun his head back at her. Whoever was on the other end of the phone must have informed him of her presence, because otherwise her feet traveled soundlessly and her body bathed in blackness.

"What do you want?" He ordered, clearly deranged and mentally exhausted. "Who are you?"

Despite the storehouse's grand size, the man had trapped himself in a corner as the factory doors appeared to be locked during the workers absence. Mary stalked closer, holding up her hands as he drew a gun upon her.

"Why did you try to kill my friend?" His face warped at the question, revealing that he knew of her current status.

"Because he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god." She pressed her forehead against the barrel and peered through his black lenses and into his soul. "Are you such a beast too?"

With a discreet retraction, she lodged her versatile blade into the man's throat and slapped his gun away. He stood shuddering in paralysis as blood moistened his white face and polished his fine overcoat. Mary watched with inhuman detest as he sprawled onto the floor as he drowned in his own Fountain of Life.

She returned to the channel of pathways and followed a route of police lights. The horrid aroma of burnt flesh stung at her nostrils as she edged closer and soon realized that the authorities were investigating a fire rather than tracking a criminal. The thought of her final opponent being the victim flashed into her mind, but the faint sound of a telephone ringing cancelled the idea.

The rings reverberated off the deteriorating bricks that she glided alongside, each chime a frigid stab at her ears as she theorized it being the final countdown of her test. If she failed to capture the target then she failed entirely, and she could not let that happen. If she was handpicked by Agent Smith to be his contender for an unknown project, then she couldn't let him down. There was nothing more than she wanted than to prove Pierce wrong, and she was positive that Smith would not object to such motions.

She advanced through a row of collapsed houses, and then a series of splintered streets. Despite the ringing growing louder, she was unnaturally drawn to a pair of broken circular glasses that were nestled into a human shaped crater in the road. Glimmering like flint from the streetlights, they seemed unfitting for the Terrorist's tastes, but she shoved them into her pocket as a scapegoat incase they did indeed belong to her foe. For a moment, she thought the telephone rings sounded like the chromatic bass notes that her video game consoles looped. But it subsided and she pressed on.

The telephone led her into a tattered diner where she found herself alone; staring down the phone like it was the true enemy. Seconds passed and she was already preparing to disable the phone as a precautionary measure, when the other terrorist fired a warning shot over her shoulder.

"Turn around and back away from the phone!" The woman demanded with her face furrowed behind her existing sunglasses. "Now!"

Mary did as she was instructed and noticed that the woman's red leather jacket had been torn, evident that the piece on the dumpster prior belonged to this woman.

"Take off your jacket!" The woman bared her teeth; almost as if she were infuriated that Mary continued to cooperate. The jacket and Mary were free of any form of weaponry, and she announced aloud, "You're unarmed…"

Mary nodded with a smirk, "I don't need guns to kill the likes of you, bitch."

The woman snarled and unloaded her gun upon Mary's front, bullets burying into her entire torso. She shoved Mary into the floor as she seized the telephone and turned her gaze to the empty doorway. Unlike before, the woman did not immediately disappear, as there seemed to be a problem on the opposite end. The ringing had died, but now the sounds of gasps and frantic rubbing fabrics assumed. The phone cord wrapped around the Terrorist's neck like a boa constrictor, and Mary's hands forced it tighter.

"You're in trouble now…" Mary hummed into the woman's ear with a trace of delight.

The woman kicked and jabbed in desperation, managing to gain quick breaths of air as she struggled with Mary. Her sunglasses tumbled to the floor and were trampled upon in the deathly dance.

"How are yo-?" She gasped, her face brightening in crimson and her visible eyes growing bloodshot. "You a hacker? Pl-ease… I ca-can p-ay you mon-ney!"

"Money? Existence is the only currency I accept. So I guess you could say that I am defrauding Death himself."

"Who a-a-are y-ou?" She wheezed, her flailing whimsy arms falling to her side.

Mary could feel the purple slab of meat losing consciousness within her grasp and she whispered her to sleep, "You may address me as Rooke."

Mary allowed the woman's body to slip from her arms and ricochet off of the wooden floor with a callous smack. She waited there patiently for the Agents to come and grade her, hoping that they would overlook her non-stealthy hiccups and appreciate the solo task she completed. She thought remorse would slither its way into her soul, but found that it seemed like more emotions were sliding away instead. But then a familiar noise made her heart jolt against her chest, making it known that she was still indeed human.

It was another telephone ringing, but this time it sounded purely of an 8-bit tone. Her eyes departed the body of the unconscious woman to the doorway, where the electronic chime called to her and her alone. She was wheeled in like an immobile fish and soon found the source of the harmonic white noise. Nestled within the gloomy depths of a barren pub resided a lone video game arcade cabinet. Even from a distance Mary recognized the classic turquoise machine as the original _Mario Bros._ and knew it wasn't supposed to be making any distinct noise, even if it was out of order.

The ringing persisted and chanted to her until it had fully drawn her to its radiant title screen. Then the ringing abruptly stopped when she touched the control panel, leaving her in silence like the screen was supposed to. Rather than being greeted by the scoreboard display, white, red, black, and sickly green text typed against an alternating background of the same colors.

"_Oh… You aren't Vince! Say… Do you like to play games, Miss?_" It asked with lagging pace, and then waited for a response.

She went to type as she would with the joystick and buttons, but no option was given. Instead the in-game graphics and sprites flickered and morphed to create the optical illusion of a pulsating wall with a running white jackrabbit. A pixilated version of Mary ran after the rabbit, unclear whether she wanted to catch it or just follow it.

After adjusting her eyes to the hyperactive colors, she murmured, "Yes."

Immediately it responded in a flurry of text, "_Oh goody! Let's play! If you win, you get the prize! No one has ever won the prize… but they have bled trying._"

"W-what game? What p-prize?" She asked uneasily, and then leaned forward as she wondered if the Terrorists were behind the malfunction, "Are you human?"

"_Are you, She-Who-'Rookes'-Death?_" The screen switched to a giant glitching hourglass stuck on its last grain of sand with a solid blue background. Buried alive in the capacious sand was Mary's sprite, tormented with blackening eyes and a decreasing health bar as the pixels fizzed and fell in translucent trails.

"I-I am Beta-four-zero-four…"

"404. _How fitting. Tell me Miss 404, what do you dream of?_"

"Who the hell are you?"

_ "Come and see!_" It replied, in both text and in a voice like thunder through both the speakers and in person as the screen cut to black, revealing a pair of glowing fiery red eyes glaring at her from behind.

She turned her head back to see an Agent standing in solitude within the entrance, consumed by shadows aside from his contoured eyes. Even with his sunglasses on the red blazed through the lenses, and only flickered when he raised his Desert Eagle towards her.

"Hey wait! Stop! I'm Beta-four-zero-four! I'm on your side! I finished tes-" But her pleas were suppressed by a single shot that was directed towards her head, the flash from the barrel illuminating the green suited male.

Before she could register who it was, everything went black like the arcade monitor had moments before. In the darkness she tried to budge, but she laid incapacitated on the dusty floor and felt a dampness stream from her grazed scalp. Then the Agent clunked over with his shoes avoiding the expanding pool of blood, and another gun flash towards her forehead revealed his identity.

Mary managed to gurgle one last breath before the bullet chiseled through her skull in a direct headshot, "Please, Agen-"

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is my first fanfiction story that I have ever written... _Constructive reviews_ would be highly appreciated!


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